Class 1^:135 
Book 

Copyright N° . 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSITS 



THE LIFE OF 
ISAAC WILSON JOYCE 



WILBUR FLETCHER SHERIDAN 
With Portraits. 




OINCINNATI: JENNINGS AND GEAHAM 
NEW YORK: EATON AND MAINS 



Two Ooim Received 

JUN 6 \9or 

COPY b. 



Copyright, 1907. by 
Jennings & Graham 



This Book is 

To THE Faithful Companion 
WHO Walked by His Side 
For Forty-four 
Years. 



PREFACE. 




HE original arrangement was that Dr. 
Richard J. Cooke should write the biog- 



raphy of Bishop Joyce. No one was better 
fitted to do SO5 as he had been long and intimately 
associated with him in his later years. After some 
months, however, Dr. Cooke found his duties as 
Book Editor so multiplying on his hands, and his 
necessary absence in Europe on official duties re- 
quiring so much of his time, that he was compelled 
to give up the task. I was then asked to under- 
take it. My acquaintance with Bishop Joyce had 
begun in my childhood, when he was our family's 
pastor at Greencastle, Indiana. While the work 
has been most congenial, two things have made it 
difficult : first, the fact that I have been in the midst 
of the pressing labors of a heavy city pastorate; 
second, that Bishop Joyce left comparatively little 
written data. He was pre-eminently a man of 

5 



6 



Preface. 



action, and was too busy making history to record 
it, and too busy preaching sermons even to write 
them. Both his words and deeds, however, are 
stamped imperishably in the hearts of men in four 
continents. W. F. S. 

Baltimore, March, 1907. 
Mount Vernon Place Parsonage, 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 

I. Ancestry — Birth — Childhood, - - - 9 

II. YouTH—CoNYERSioN— Education, - - 17 

III. Into the Methodist Ministry, - - - 23 

IV. The Circuit Eider, 28 

V. Ten Years in Lafayette, - - - - 41 

YI. Pastorates at Baltimore and Green- 
castle, ------ - 61 

VII. Cincinnati Pastorates, - - - - 59 

VIII. Elected Bishop, - 75 

IX. His Episcopal Eesidences — Chattanooga 

and Minneapolis, 87 

X. As AN Administrator, - - - - 104 

XI. As A Preacher, - ^ - - - - 116 

XII. Bishop Joyce and Foreign Missions, - 129 

XIII. His Missionary Tours Through Asia, - 151 

XIV. Bishop Joyce and the Epworth League, 179 

XV. Decoration Day Address Delivered at 

Chattanooga, 185 

7 



8 



Contents, 



Pagej 

XYI. His Religious Experience, - - - 208 
XVII. A Beautiful Home Life, - - - - 220 

XVIII. The Last Days, 227 

XIX. Isaac Wilson Joyce as We Knew Him, 249 
XX. Estimates by Church Leaders, - - - 260 



CHAPTER I. 



Ancestry — Birth — Childhood. 
T that latitude in our land where the cold 



intellectualism of the North meets the warm 



magnetism of the South, it might be ex- 
pected that a type of mind and temperament 
should be produced which should blend the two. 
And if it be the region, also, where the East 
and West meet, it might reasonably be antici- 
pated that there would be united with the already 
composite character something of the caution and 
conservatism of the East, together with the energy 
and breeziness of the West. And it might further 
be expected that in this region would arise the most 
facile and adaptable kind of Americanism. Fus- 
ing as it would, the several elements, and coming 
into constant touch with them, there would arise 
a composite type that could appreciate the view- 
point of all, and become readily representative 



It is this very thing that has happened. And 
as one result, Ohio has become the fatherland of 
Presidents and of bishops. It is not that that 




of aU. 



9 



10 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



State has produced men of greater intellectual 
girth or eloquence, but that she has produced a 
more representative, because a more composite 
tj^pe. "Born in Ohio for political purposes," is 
the way a Congressional wit, the Honorable Adam 
Bede, of Minnesota, puts it. 

Ohio has given to the people called Methodists 
thirteen of their bishops: Ames, Simpson, W. L. 
Harris, Foster, Merrill, Walden, Thoburn, Cran- 
ston, McCabe, Moore, McDowell, M. C. Harris, 
and the subject of our biography, Isaac Wilson 
J oyce. 

If "to be born obscure and die famous is the 
acme of human felicity," Bishop Joyce attained 
the apex of human happiness. His father, James 
Wilson Joyce, was a humble farmer and plasterer, 
living, at the time of Isaac's birth, on a farm in 
Colerain Township, Hamilton County, near Cin- 
cinnati, Ohio. There, on the 11th of October, 
1836, Isaac was born. His father's maternal 
grandfather was the Reverend Isaac Wilson, a 
Scotch Presbyterian minister of Ireland. They 
gave to the child the name of this ministerial an- 
cestor. Bishop Joyce's grand-parents, on his 
father's side, were William and Margaret Wilson 
Joyce. 

"The Joyces traced tKeir ancestry back to Wil- 
liam and Hannah Joyce, of Dublin, Ireland; and 



Ancestry — Birth — Childhood. 



11 



back of them to the Joyces of County Gal way, 
Ireland. Hardiman's "History of Galway" says 
of the Joyces: 

"This old Galway family is of ancient and 
honorable English descent, and was allied to the 
Welsh and British princes. Thomas Joyce, the 
first of the name that came to Ireland, sailed from 
Wales in the reign of Edward I. . . . He di- 
rected his course to the western part of Connaught 
(of which Galway is a part), where he acquired 
considerable tracts of territory, which his posterity 
still inhabit. While on the voyage, his wife 
(daughter of O'Brien, chief of Thomund, in Mun- 
ster) gave birth to a son, whom he named Mac 
Mara — 'Son of the Sea.' He extended his father's 
acquisitions, and from him descended the sept of 
Joyces, a race of men remarkable for their stature, 
who for centuries past inhabited the mountainous 
district in far Connaught, called from them ^the 
Joyce Country.' 

Mr. Henry D. Teetor, a genealogist of Wash- 
ington City, asserts that the name Joyce was orig- 
inally Norman, and the family of Norman origin. 
It is claimed that the name is a corruption of 
"Jorz" or "Gorst," which became "Joce," and 
finally Joyce. "DeJorz or Joyce obtained ex- 
tended possessions in West Connaught, Ireland, in 
the time of Edward I, 1272-1307, by marriage 



*Dr. P. H. Bodkin in California Independent. 



12 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



with the OTlahertys, where their descendants re- 
main to this day.'' "John, Simon, Matthew, and 
Robert (Joyce) were landed proprietors of Barony 
Forth at the time of the CromweUian Settlement 
of Ireland, 1653-4, of which they were then dis- 
possessed." But in a later generation "a portion 
of this vast patrimony was recovered." Hall, an 
authority on the Irish people, says: "The Joyces 
are a magnificent race of men, the biggest and 
stoutest and tallest I have ever seen in Ireland." 
Blake, in his letters from the Irish Highlanders, 
writing in 1823, says that "Edward Joyce, or 'Big 
Ned,' as he was called, was between six and seven 
feet in height and large in proportion." Upon 
one of the many stone-cairns in "Joyce's Country," 
tipped with a wooden cross, may be read the fol- 
lowing inscription: 

"Pray for y^ sole of John Joyce and Mary 
Joyce, his wife, died 1712." 

Whatever may be the relation of Bishop Joyce 
to the Irish Joyces and Norman Jorsts or Joces, 
whether nobles or peasants, it is certain that he 
was little interested in the factitious distinctions 
of ancestry. With Gibbons, he accounted a "coat 
of arms the most useless of all coats." He was 
infinitely more concerned in raising up a race of 
royal spiritual children than in proving himself 
a son of nobility. 



Ancestry — BirtJi — Childhood. 



13 



If Bishop Joyce's blood was originally Nor- 
man, it had tarried long enough amid Irish tarns 
to become thoroughly tinctured with Celtic feel- 
ing. The pathos, the fire, and the eloquence of 
the native Irishman were all his. The best qual- 
ities of that sturdy stock seem to have come to 
blossom in him. 

On his mother's side Bishop Joyce was of Ger- 
man extraction. In religion her people were 
Lutherans. Of German influence there is no trace 
in his life, however, save perhaps in the youthful 
allegiance to the United Brethren Church, which 
is of German origin. 

The father of Isaac Wilson Joyce was a 
farmer. Isaac was reared on the farm not far 
from Cincinnati. No doubt he frequently went 
with his father to that city, which at that time, 
in the forties, had become the leading city in the 
West, enjoying the title "The Queen City of the 
West." Little did the country boy, riding in on 
their primitive wagon, dream that he was to be so 
intimately and influentially connected with that 
city's life. 

Young Joyce enjoyed the advantages of the 
country schools, which, even at that early period, 
were good in Ohio. For that State has always 
been well at the front in education. 

In April, 1850, when he was thirteen years 



14 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



of age, his parents moved to Indiana. Many 
families in that part of Ohio were doing the same 
thing at that time. The beautiful districts about 
Lafayette and Frankfort, Indiana, were attract- 
ing many of these settlers. The Joyces settled 
north of Lafayette, at a point made famous forty 
years before by a bloody battle between the In- 
dians, led by Elkswatawa, more commonly called 
"The Prophet," a brother of Tecumseh, and the 
whites, led by William Henry Harrison. It is 
known in history as "The Battle of Tippecanoe," 
because of its being fought on the banks of that 
stream, a tributary of the Wabash. The town of 
Battle Ground grew up there, and about two miles 
to the northeast of this town, in a little log house, 
the Joyces lived. His boyhood days were days of 
poverty. He grew up in a two-roomed log house, 
with a lean-to for a kitchen. A barefoot boy in 
homespun, he trod every foot of ground around 
that little hut, and on that little farm. In an ad- 
dress in later years he describes tenderly the morn- 
ing-glory vines that grew up over the windows of 
that humble house, shaking their blue and pink 
striped bells in the sunshine, a pathetic token of 
the hunger for beauty in the heart of his mother 
amid the privations of the far frontier. And with 
his description of the morning-glories was poured 



Ancestry — Birth — Childhood. 1 5 



out a tribute of undying appreciation of that 
mother love. 

Uneventful enough must have been young 
Joyce's adolescent life on the Indiana farm. Fol- 
lowing the plow in the spring, taking his place, 
scythe in hand, with his father in the ripe wheat 
of summer, cutting and shocking the corn in the 
autumn, and attending school in the winter — ^this 
was the program for those first four years in In- 
diana. 

With his temperament, however, it could not 
have been but that young Joyce drank deeply of 
Nature's beauties, and entered into sympathy with 
her passing moods. Nowhere does she manifest 
her charms in greater variety than in the region 
where he had taken up his abode. There was 
prairie, and there was woodland. Hills and streams 
were not far away. The Tippecanoe is a beau- 
tiful stream even yet. And the country rolled 
away in gentle undulations, in a way that was 
as restful to the eye as it was pleasing to the im- 
agination. The streams and birds and flowers 
were all his friends. In productiveness the region 
was one of the richest in the West, and the fam- 
ilies around soon began to prosper, and the com- 
forts of life became accessible to all. 

His father died in 1878. Years later his 



16 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce* 



mother married Mr. Isaac Ervin, of Hamilton 
County, Ohio, a lover of her early girlhood. Many 
years later he, too, died, and the mother spent the 
twilight of life with her honored son in his home 
in Minneapolis, until the Bishop left for South 
America. She then went to her only daughter, 
Mrs. Dunafee, in lola, Kansas, where she died in 
March, 1904. 



CHAPTER II. 



Youth — Conversion — Education. 

TOUNG JOYCE'S youth did not difFer 
from that of the average farmer boy in 
the earKer days of Indiana. The summer 
was spent in work on the farm, and the winter in 
the district school. The American public has had 
a distorted conception of the schools of Indiana, 
and of the intelligence of her people. This has 
been due largely to the writings of the late Ed- 
ward Eggleston, himself a circuit-rider in Indiana 
at an early day. While "The End of the World" 
and "The Hoosier Schoolmaster" may have truly 
reflected the life of isolated communities in South- 
ern Indiana, where the scenes were laid, they cari- 
catured the State as a whole. And this caricature 
has been accepted by the American public as por- 
traiture. We m^ay add, parenthetically, that the 
late John Clark Ridpath, the historian, shared the 
view just expressed as to the responsibility for 
Indiana's undeserved reputation for illiteracy. 
The schools were of a high order, throughout the 
rural regions as well as the towns, during even the 
fifties, when young Joyce was in them. 
2 17 



18 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



On finishing the district school an event oc- 
curred which had a determining effect on his edu- 
cation, as well as on every interest of his life. 
That event was his conversion. 

It is not often that a raccoon hunt ends in a 
revival meeting. But Isaac and several neighbor 
boys were out coon hunting one July night in 
1852, when the party became scattered for some 
reason, and young Joyce became lost from his 
companions. Wandering around in the woods he 
heard singing, and presently saw a light. Com- 
ing out into the road, he saw that the light and 
the singing proceeded from a schoolhouse. En- 
tering, he found a revival meeting in progress, 
conducted by the Reverend David Brown, a United 
Brethren preacher; and like an earlier David, 
tliis David's aim brought down a giant that night. 
Only it was to life that j'Oung Joyce was brought, 
not death. Humbling liimself as a seeking peni- 
tent under the exhortation of the preacher, Isaac 
was happily converted to God. In his later years 
he sometimes declared in preaching: "I was con- 
verted on the hottest night in July I ever saw, 
and I have not cooled off yet." 

This conversion occurred when Isaac was six- 
teen years of age. His mother had united with 
the United Brethren Church, and he was baptized 
in the Wabash River soon after this by Mr, 



Youth — Conversion — Education. 1 9 



Brown, and received as a member of this Church. 
He was religiously zealous from the first, and took 
part in the family worship with his father. He 
was a born preacher, for when he was a little boy 
he would go out and preach to the trees and any 
other objects he could cluster together, going 
through the forms of religious service. When he 
was to be baptized, he chose immersion, and, 
though the weather was very cold, he insisted on 
having it done at once. So they cut the ice, and 
both he and a brother were immersed. 

Any other Church might have had this choice 
young man, had it been as alert and passionate 
in its quest of souls as was this little United 
Brethren society, holding evangelistic meetings in 
the heat of midsummer in an Indiana schoolhouse. 
The incident calls to mind the saying of Hugh 
Price Hughes that "the people belong to any 
Church that has the apostolic aggressiveness and 
the sanctified common sense to go for them." It 
is also an illustration of the character of the work 
done in winning the West for Christ. Those de- 
nominations that did not wait for the parlor car 
or even the railroad, but pushed their way out, 
over bad roads and through the forests, secured 
the choicest families of that region for their com- 
munions. 

Soon young Joyce felt burning within him the 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



longing for an education. Notliing quickens that 
desire like a sound conversion. The influence of 
the preacher in it is seen in the fact that he chose 
Hartsville College as his place of study. This 
United Brethren school was situated in Barthol- 
omew County, a hundred and fifty miles from his 
home. He might have gone to Wabash College, 
which was only thirty miles away, at Crawfords- 
ville. He might have chosen Asbury (now De- 
Pauw) University, which was only seventy miles 
away, at Greencastle. But the former was Presby- 
terian, and the latter was a Methodist school; 
while Hartsville was a United Brethren school. 
And that settled the matter. And the ministers 
under v/hom they have been converted have de- 
cided the matter for thousands of the young men 
of our land. The circuit-riders have turned the 
feet of these young men towards the colleges of 
the Church. While at the same time from their 
own scanty salaries they have helped to keep those 
colleges open. The epic of the educational serv- 
ice and sacrifice of the circuit-rider in America 
has yet to be written. 

Young Joyce attended the Hartsville College 
for two years — 1854-6. He worked his way, earn- 
ing his support by sawing and chopping wood, 
janitor work, a.nd other manual labor. 

He was an enthusiastic student, and made ex- 



Youth — Conversion — Education. 21 



cellent progress in his studies. He cultivated the 
art of public speaking at every opportunity. 
Those who knew him at this time speak of his 
style as being somewhat florid — a natural thing 
in a youth, especially one of as enthusiastic tem- 
perament as 3^oung Joyce. At this time his course 
^t Hartsville was interrupted by the financial 
straits of a member of his family, who had gone 
into business at Rensselaer, Indiana. In order to 
save the business, Isaac left college, took charge 
of the business — a photograph establishment — 
conducted it successfully for a time, sold it out 
at a profit, and then went to teaching in the 
schools of the same town. 

But although he had given up his college 
course, he had by no means given up his purpose 
to secure a good education. During the two years 
of teaching that immediately followed he kept up 
his studies. And later still he took the required 
course for securing the degree of Master of Arts 
at Asbury (now DePauw) University, receiving 
that degree in 1872. 

His attitude toward higher education in his 
maturer years is shown by the following letter, 
written to a young man just graduated from 
DePauw University, who was expecting to enter 
the ministry : 



22 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



"Cincinnati, Ohio, July 31, 1885. 
"My Dear : 

"I think if you can arrange it so you can go 
to a theological school, you would do well to go. 
If you could not go for the three required years, 
I would go at least for one year; and if you can 
get credit for what you have done at DePauw in 
Hebrew and Greek, I think you can graduate at 
any one of our theological schools in two years. 
It is my judgment that all our young ministers 
would do well, if they can so arrange it, to go to 
a theological school before they enter regularly 
into the work of the Christian ministry. 

"Yours in love, I. Joyce." 



CHAPTER III. 



Into the Methodist Ministry. 

WHILE in college at Hartsville young 
Joyce had been licensed as a local 
preacher by the United Brethren. He 
occasionally exercised the functions of that office 
at country appointments near Hartsville and also 
near his old home. 

While teaching at Rensselaer he had in his 
school children of the Reverend Aaron Hays, the 
Methodist minister of that town. Mr. Hays be- 
came impressed with the superior qualities of 
young Joyce. He felt that a young man of un- 
usual gifts was among them. He communicated 
his views to his presiding elder, the Reverend Ben- 
jamin Winans, of Lafayette, and to the widely 
known and honored Granville Moody, who came to 
Rensselaer at this time on a visit. The influence 
which Dr. Moody exerted on Mr. Joyce's life is 
found in the former's own words as given in his 
"Autobiography 

"In the year 1858 I spent several days in Jas- 
per County, Indiana, where my real estate is lo- 
cated. One day I went to Rensselaer, the county- 

23 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



seat of said county, and called at the Methodist 
parsonage to see the pastor, Aaron Hays, an old 
friend of mine. During a somewhat protracted 
conversation the name of a young man who was 
teaching school in the town was mentioned. Some 
things that were said gave me a desire to see him 
and know more about him. When I arose to de- 
part the pastor invited me to return in the even- 
ing, and spend the night under his roof. I ac- 
cepted the invitation. 

"On going out of the town to meet some en- 
gagements for the afternoon, I met a young man 
coming from the direction in which I was going. 
I had an impression that he was the one whose 
name I had heard mentioned at the parsonage. 
So strong was the impression that when we came 
near each other I stopped and asked him his name ; 
he replied, ^Joyce.' I said, ^Are you the young 
man teaching school in town; and are the Meth- 
odist minister's children members of your school?' 
He answered, ^Yes.' I asked him a number of 
questions. I found he was a member of the 
United Brethren Church; had been converted 
when sixteen years of age ; was at the time twenty- 
two years old; and was now teaching school in 
order to pay some debts contracted during his 
struggle in college to secure an education. His 
purpose was to enter the Christian ministry. He 
was then a local preacher in the United Brethren 
Church; had, however, preached only a few times, 
and had in a few instances announced a hymn 
and offered prayer in the Methodist church at 
the close of the pastor's sermon. A few more 



Into the Methodist Ministry. 25 



questions brought out the fact that he was becom- 
ing much dissatisfied with the United Brethren 
Church, because of the opposition he found on 
the part of some of the ministers of that Church 
to an educated ministry. 

"He was quite poor, had struggled hard to 
secure an education, and was rapidly becoming 
unwilling to give his life to a Church where so 
little was, at that timie, done for the cause of edu- 
cation. His replies to all my questions convinced 
me at once of a duty I owed to this young man. 
He was correct and exact in all his responses, and 
gave evidence of a superior mind. I said to him, 
'Please meet me at the parsonage to-night, and 
we will continue this conversation.' 

"I went and met my engagement, and re- 
turned to the home of my friend the pastor. The 
young man soon after came in, and was cordially 
greeted by the family, as well as by myself. I 
said to him: 'Brother, I have been thinking much 
about our conversation this afternoon, and I am 
impressed that God and the Methodist Episcopal 
Church have need of you.' I added: 'You can 
better your condition by a change of your Church 
relations, which will demand no change in your 
religious views. Suppose you allow me to move 
in this change of your Church relations. Come 
over into the Methodist Episcopal Church. We 
can give you a larger field of usefulness in the 
ministry, without any material change in senti- 
ment; and employment in preaching the Gospel, 
without burdening you five days in each week with 
the dull routine and anxious cares of a pedagogue, 



26 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



and thus leaving but the dull remains of life for 
the work of the ministry. Come, my brother, put 
your case in my hands this week. I am going to- 
morrow through Lafayette, and I will see Benja- 
min Winans, presiding elder of that district. I 
will represent you and your condition to him, as 

his next quarterly meeting in will be held 

three weeks from Saturday. I will ask him to take 
your name to the Annual Conference, so that you 
may receive an appointment, under a presiding 
elder, as a supply on some circuit. Then the reg- 
ular recommendation from some Quarterly Confer- 
ence can be taken up the next year. I will stop 
on my way home and get all ready for you to 
make the change in your Church relations, and it 
will be for God's glory, for your greater useful- 
ness, and will afford you a comfortable support 
and a much wider field of usefulness. Now then, 
my brother, just say, "I will," and, under God and 
the presiding elder, I will do the rest.' 

"He was much moved at my proposal. He 
asked several pointed questions about the doctrines 
and government of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, and wanted to know more fully of the re- 
quirements of its ministry. I found that fears 
were rising in his manly mind as to his competency 
for the work in our communion, to which he gave 
becoming utterances, and to which I gave suitable 
responses. After struggling exercises of mind, 
commingled with becoming fears of inadequacy 
to the work, he at length responded : agree with 
you, sir, in sentiment, and I put my application 
into your hands and the presiding elder's.' I said : 



Into the Methodist Ministry/. 



27 



'Amen! and may this auspicious interview be an 
augury of success, with God's blessing!' He was 
at once received into the ^Methodist Episcopal 
Church by Brother Hays, as a full member, on 
his credentials as a local preacher among the United 
Brethren. 

"The next day I found the presiding elder, 
represented the matter, and met with the heartiest 
co-operation. All the doors and locks, as in Peter's 
exodus from prison, opened of themselves. The 
Rev. Brother Joyce rejoiced in the happy change 
that had taken place in his Church relations." 
(Page 330.) 

Dr. Moody never lost his interest in the recruit 
he had secured for Methodism. He followed his 
career with deepening satisfaction and thankful- 
ness. And when at last he lay on his deathbed 
in Mt. Vernon, Iowa, he asked that Dr. Joyce — 
at this time pastor of St. Paul Church, Cincin- 
nati — should preach his funeral sermon. This 
service Dr. Joyce tenderly and gratefully ren- 
dered. 



CHAPTER IV. 



The Circuit-Rider. 

IT was in June, 1858, that Mr. Joyce, then 
nearly twentj^-two years of age, united with 
the Methodist Episcopal Church. His stand- 
ing as a local preacher in the United Brethren 
Church gave him that relation also in the Meth- 
odist Church. He attended the session of the 
Northwest Indiana Conference at Valparaiso, in 
September, and was given work as a "supply." 

Rolling Prairie Circuit, in the region near 
LaPorte, in the extreme northwestern section of 
Indiana, was his field of work, and he was to be 
the junior preacher, his colleague and chief being 
the Rev. Thomas Hackney. On returning from 
Conference he immediately began preparations to 
go to his new field of labor. His father gave him 
a horse, a saddle and bridle, and two dollars and 
a quarter in cash. We are particular about men- 
tioning the quarter, because that was all the money 
he had left when he reached his new home. The 
rest of his belongings included his clothes, his 
Bible, Hymn Book, and Discipline^ all of which 

28 




Isaac w. Joyce 

AT THE AGE OF 22 YEARS 



The Circuit-Rider. 



29 



were packed into a pair of saddlebags. With this 
extensive outfit he started for his appointment, 
one hundred and fifty miles away. It took three 
days to make the journey. Several times on the 
way the horse was fed while the rider went hungry, 
because it was important that the horse should be 
able to carry his load to the end of the journey, 
and there was not enough money to furnish plenty 
for both. So young Joyce omitted his own noon 
meals, and would sing the hymns of Zion to enable 
him to forget his hunger. He would also shout 
and praise God for having saved his soul. 

**No foot of land do I possess, 
No. cottage in this wilderness," 

made glorious music in those Indiana woods, when 
sung by men who had laid their all on God's altar. 
Many of the hymns he loved best he committed to 
memory. 

At the close of the third day he reached the 
hospitable home of Rev. Levi Moore, a local 
preacher on the Rolling Prairie Circuit. Here he 
was warmly welcomed and made to feel at home 
from the first. Mrs. Moore proved a true and 
kind mother to the young circuit-rider, and he 
always cherished tender memories of his first ex- 
periences in the home of these loyal Methodists. 

His salary was one hundred dollars in money. 



30 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



and board. The latter he obtained by "boarding 
round" among the members. In order to supple- 
ment the small salary, Mr. Joyce taught during 
the school months. It was while being entertained 
in the home of one of his pupils that he met the 
young lady who afterwards became his wife — Miss 
Caroline Walker Bosserman, daughter of George 
and Frances Toney Bosserman. It goes without 
saying that the Bosserman home became a favorite 
stopping-place with the junior preacher of that 
circuit from that time on. 

Notwithstanding the double work of teacher 
and preacher, young Joyce devoted himself ener- 
getically to his books. All his spare time was 
spent with them. And the year quickly and hap- 
pily passed away. 

Among the papers of Bishop Joyce was found 
a renewal of his license as a local preacher, which 
was granted in August of the year 1859. At this 
time he spelled his name " Joice.'' It was not until 
1863 that he changed it to the generally accepted 
spelling, "Joyce." 

Isaac W. Joice, the bearer, license renewed as 
a local 'preacher in the M. E. Church. Done at a 
Quarterly Conference held in Portland, Rolling 
Prairie Circuity N, W. Ind. Conf., South Bend 
Dist. 

August 6, 1869. T. S. Webb, P. E. 



The Circuit-Rider, 



31 



In September, 1859, the Conference met at 
Greencastle. Bishop Morris was the bishop in 
charge. There Mr. Joyce was admitted into the 
Conference "on trial," as the Methodist term is. 
In the same class with him were J. H. Cissel, 
E. W. Lawhon, J, H. Staley, and others. The 
first two of these died the same year that Bishop 
Joyce died. 

If any one had told young Joyce that in eight- 
een years he would be the pastor of the leading 
Greencastle Church he would have charged them 
with folly, while the exalted position of a bishop 
was beyond his wildest dreams. He hoped to make 
an effective circuit preacher, and perhaps after a 
long time to reach a "station." 

At the Greencastle Conference he was appointed 
junior preacher of Romney Circuit, near Lafay- 
ette, his senior colleague being the Rev. Frank 
Pierce. This circuit had only twelve appoint- 
ments, while his previous charge had had sixteen. 
He could get around to each of the Romney ap- 
pointments every three weeks. 

The home of Mr. Wesley White, of Linden, 
was the junior preacher's home, and he found there 
most congenial friends. Their sympathy was ex- 
pressed in many ways, some of them very substan- 
tial. For years it was a joy to him to pay an 
annual visit to this lovely family. 



32 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



The next Conference, that of 1860, met at 
Terre Haute. Bishop Simpson presided. The 
pastor of the West Lebanon Circuit said to Joyce : 
"I hope you will not be appointed to West Leb- 
anon Circuit. It is the hardest appointment in 
the Conference.'' Both young men took it for 
granted that he would receive a new charge, for 
in those days no young preacher was kept on a 
circuit for more than one year. 

But when the bishop arose to read the appoint- 
ments, and that deathly stillness came upon the 
Conference, which always comes when many men 
do not know what their fate is to be for the en- 
suing twelve months — it may mean life or death 
to wife or child, or the preacher — ^he announced, 
"West Lebanon Circuit, Isaac W. Joyce." 

When Mr. Joyce reached the circuit he found 
twenty appointments scattered over a very large 
territory. He made the rounds once in three 
weeks, but had to preach much of the year four 
times a Sunday in order to do it. He had good 
meetings at several of his points, and received sub- 
stantial additions to the membership. 

On March 20, 1861, he was married to Miss 
Bosserman, to whom he had been engaged since 
leaving the Rolling Prairie Circuit. There was 
no parsonage,^ and one hundred dollars a year 
salary was hardly sufficient to support two — fispe- 



The Circuit-Rider. 



33 



daily when it was paid in depreciated State bank 
bills, cutting its actual value to sixty-five dollars; 
so Mr. and Mrs. Joyce "boarded around'' among 
the members until the Conference in the fall. The 
people were kind and hospitable, so the experience 
was not an unpleasant one. Mr. Joyce recorded 
that he "moved" six times that Conference year. 

His wife had to read to him the books for his 
Conference course of study that summer, as he was 
suffering from an affliction of the eyes which par- 
tially blinded him for the time. So Watson's 
"Institutes" and Wesley's "Notes" came to him 
second-hand. 

Up to this time the young circuit-rider had 
had only the hardest appointments. He had been 
learning to preach, and attending what the 
preachers humorously called "Brush College." 
The data of this period are very scanty. But 
evidently he had made a good impression, for we 
find at the Conference that fall, 1861, held at 
South Bend, Mr. Joyce received a substantial pro- 
motion. He was ordained deacon, admitted into 
full membership in the Conference, and sent to 
Covington Circuit, Covington being a county-seat, 
and the circuit having but four appointments. 
The salary was three hundred and fifty dollars, 
and they paid him four hundred and fifty dollars, 
3 



Life of Isaac Wilso7i Joyce. 



a princely sum compared with what he had been 
receiving the three previous years. 

On March 18th of the following year a son 
was born to them, whom they called Frank Mel- 
ville. He is now Colonel Frank M. Joyce, of 
Minneapolis, Minnesota, prominent in business cir- 
cles in the Central West. 

Mr. J. F. Compton, of Perrysville, Indiana, 
was a teacher in the town schools of Covington, 
and writes as follows concerning Mr. Joyce's pas- 
torate : 

"In the year 1862, when the writer went to 
take charge of the town schools in Covington, we 
found Rev. Isaac W. Joyce in charge of the Meth- 
odist Church at that place. For a time he and his 
good v/ife gave me a home with them. His family 
consisted of himself, his wife, and his son Frank, 
then a babe. 

"I found there a happy Christian family, a 
model home, and a delightful companionship. 
During my stay with them was laid the foundation 
of a lasting and sincere friendship. Brother Joyce 
did not possess much of this world's goods. But 
he did possess a genial disposition, fine social qual- 
ities, and a warm heart, which enabled him to win 
friends among all classes of society and wherever 
he went. 

"While Brother Joyce was popular in the social 
circle, his power as a preacher gave him a still 
greater influence over the people. . • . From a 
humble beginning he labored without marked re- 



The Circuit-Rider. 



35 



suits until the second year of his pastorate, when, 
under God's blessings, he won the hearts of busi- 
ness men, men of the world and young people, and 
many a hardened sinner. He then and there had 
on his hands a widespread, glorious revival, such 
as that Church and town had never experienced 
before. Scores of people, young and old, and from 
many walks of life, fell before its power, and were 
thorouglily converted. Many young men and 
women were blessed in that revival, whose lives have 
since been examples of God's saving grace, and 
who have gone out from there to bless the world. 
The writer bears testimony from a grateful heart 
to his fidelity as a personal friend, and to the influ- 
ence and inspiration of his great service, and to 
the faithfulness of his great, loving heart." 

A year or two before Bishop Joyce's death he 
received a letter from an old friend of the Coving- 
ton days, which gives so vivid a description of 
Mr. Joyce's methods, as well as the strong hold he 
secured on men, that we give it entire. The writer 
is a prominent attorney in Kansas City, Missouri: 

"My Dear Brother Joyce: 

"The brief interview we had as you were leav- 
ing here last Saturday has brought fresh to me 
many endearing remembrances, reaching back to 
the verge of life's springtime, when there was no 
sorrow in the day, and no winter in the year. 
Some of these recollections have been often re- 
called, and have been long cherished; while others 



36 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



come to me like a lost strain of music, or a for- 
gotten dream. 

"When jou and I first met, we were in the 
lustihood of young manhood. Neither of us was 
then married. But I was 'going to see' the young 
lad}^ who became my wife, while you were ^riding 
the circuit' (the Rolling Prairie) on which was an 
'appointment' in a schoolhouse near her home. We 
sometimes y>'alked over to that schoolhouse on Sun- 
day afternoons to hear you preach; and she it was 
who introduced me to you. 

"Later on, when we had moved to Covington, 
you were sent to that charge, and brought your 
young wife with you. There were then tzco happy 
young couples in that town that we know of. They 
still live, and I hope may enjoy a correspondingly 
happy old age. 

"When you came it was a critical time in my 
religious life. The subtle moral blight always in- 
cident to civil war was beginning to show itself. 
All my associates at the Covingon bar were irre- 
ligious. Birch having gone to the war. I had 

known at college, and he and were my 

most intimate friends outside the bar. They were 
bright companionable men, but all wrong morally. 

"Our Church at Covington was almost in a 
state of collapse, and was uninviting. I had been 
a member of the Church for some three 3^ears at 
Greencastle (at Asbury University), but not an 
active one. there beino; so manv others there better 
fitted for active work. When you came, however, 
your aggressiveness and courage challenged my ad- 
miration. You pressed me into the service, and 
pushed me forward in Church work. That was 



The Circuit-Rider, 



37 



exactly what I needed. I was a little reluctant at 
first, but soon came to see, that while you needed 
me, I needed you still more. I enjoyed your com- 
panionship and prized your friendship, and 
through your help and influence I grew to be, in 
a small way, a sort of stand-by in that Church, 
and was a class leader when I left to come here. 

"But our paths in life soon diverged, and you 
have never known the sense of obligation I have 
been under to you for all these years. I there- 
fore now write you this plain, unvarnished state- 
ment, so that you may know that I do not forget, 
nor fail to appreciate your timely help in the 
long ago. 

"And now allow me to add that when you were 
elected bishop, I believed the Church would be 
benefited thereby; but I could not bring myself 
to feel that in any true sense it was for you a pro- 
motion. To my mind, the highest position in our 
Church, and the hardest to fill properly, is that of 
'preacher in charge.' You always had revivals, 
and for the best part of your life were a success- 
ful preacher and pastor. And I sometimes wonder 
if you do not often experience a sort of feeling 
of isolation in your present position. For while 
you meet the preachers and the Church officials, 
you doubtless miss that heart-to-heart contact with 
the people in their every-day life and experiences, 
which only a pastor can have. However this may 
be, I am sure that your old age will be rich in the 
memories of your active life as a pastor. The 
older we grow, the more do we delight to live over 
again the past. This is one of the compensations 
of age. 



38 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



"With kindest regards of myself and wife to 
3^ou and yours, believe me as ever, 
"Sincerely your friend, 

"L. C. Slavens." 

To have won one such eminent layman as the 
writer of the above letter was worth Mr. Joyce's 
two years' work at Covington. 

In the fall of 1863 the Conference m.et at 
Micliigan City, Bishop Morris presiding. Mr. 
Joyce was ordained elder, and was appointed to 
Williamsport, the county seat of Warren County, 
the adjoining county north of Fountain County, 
of which Covington was the county seat. The two- 
year time-limit was still in force, being changed 
to three years the next year. Williamsport was a 
"station;" that is, had no country appointments 
attached. This was Mr. Joyce's first station, and 
his friends regarded it as a promotion. Often 
there is as much felicitation with circuit preachers 
over being promoted to a station as there is among 
leaders in the ministry over being chosen to a 
General Conference position. 

The increased income wliich his new appoint- 
ment brought he welcomed as an opportunity to 
buy books. And it was with joy that he saw his 
little library growing steadil3^ Often he would 
say to liis wife: "I am so glad you would rather 
I would buy books than to use the salary for less 
important tilings." 



The Circuit-Rider. 



39 



During the first year of his Williamsport pas- 
torate an incident occurred which came near termi- 
nating Mr. Joyce's life. There were two saloons 
in the town which were doing a great deal of 
damage; more, the Church people felt, than the 
Churches could offset by their efforts. Under the 
leadership of Mr. Joyce and the Rev. Mr. Steele, 
the Presbyterian minister, the better element of 
the community succeeded in defeating the appli- 
cations of these men for a renewal of license. Thi^ 
so incensed these men and their friends that they 
attempted to murder both ministers. The Presby- 
terian minister lived on the second floor of a dwell- 
ing. Some unknown person called for him to come 
down stairs, but he refused to do so. The same 
night two men came to the Methodist parsonage. 
A window shade was up from the bottom, and they 
could see Mr. Joyce sitting by his book case, read- 
ing. A bullet crashed through the window, barely 
missing Mr. Joyce's head, and buried itself in the 
book case. Two books were mutilated by the ball. 
There was no way of proving who did the shoot- 
ing, although the act provoked intense indignation 
throughout the community. As the two saloon 
men left the town immediately, there was no doubt 
in the minds of the people as to who the guilty 
persons were. Mr. Joyce carried the bullet for 
years as a souvenir of the perilous experience. 



40 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



Good revivals were had during both years of 
his stay in WiUiamsport, and the Church pros- 
pered under his care. On July 5th of his first year 
there, 1864, a second son was born to Mr. and 
Mrs. Joyce. They called him Wilbur Bruce. The 
little one was not to tarry long, for fifteen months 
later he died. 

It was at Delphi that their baby's death oc- 
curred, in October of 1865. It was their first 
sorrow, and their grief was great. Mr. Joyce had 
been appointed to the Delphi Church at the Con- 
ference held the month previous. Delphi is on 
the Wabash River, about fifty or sixty miles above 
Williamsport, which is also on the Wabash. Mr. 
Joyce had a good year at Delphi, and fully ex- 
pected to return when he went to the Conference 
of 1866, which was held at Laporte, Bishop Ames 
presiding. But a strong request came to the 
bishop for his appointment to a much stronger 
Church — Ninth Street, Lafayette, and the bishop 
made the appointment. 

While the new charge was gratifying from the 
view-point of larger opportunity and promotion, 
yet it was with sad hearts *that they turned away 
from Delphi. Some precious friendships had been 
formed there, and a little mound in the cemetery 
made the place one of the dearest spots on earth 
to this itinerant and his wife. 



CHAPTER V. 



Ten Years in Lafayette. 



W 



HEN Bishop Ames read out the name 
"Isaac W. Joyce" for Ninthi Street 
Church, Lafayette, at the Conference 



held at Laporte, in 1866, it was felt by many to 
be an astonishing promotion for a young man of 
twenty-nine, who had been a member of the Con- 
ference in full connection only five years. Some 
of the older men shook their heads, and declared 
that a blunder had been made. 

As for the appointee himself, he went with fear 
and trembling to his city appointment. He had 
always lived in the country, or in towns that were 
scarcely larger than villages. Now he was to meet 
the problems of a city Church. Such an experi- 
ence is always an intensely interesting and anxious 
one to ministers, and to their friends as well, for 
it usually means either the "making or breaking" 
of the preacher. 

Mr. Joyce followed Dr. Aaron Wood, one of 
the pioneer preachers of the Conference, and who 
is still held in loving and venerated memory 



41 



42 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce, 



throughout Indiana. When the new preacher was 
moving into the parsonage, and Mrs. Wood, fa- 
miliarly known as "Auntie Wood," was packing 
up to move out, sympathy was expressed that such 
veterans should have to move so often. Auntie 
Wood cheerily replied: "What is the use of being 
a soldier if you do not drill?" It was that spirit 
that made Methodism. The epic of the devotion 
shown b}^ these unheralded heroes and heroines of 
the Cross has never yet been penned. 

Three years were spent at Ninth Street, with 
steadily gaining favor among the people. Each 
year his Church was visited with a gracious re- 
vival. The membership increased and every inter- 
est of the Church prospered. 

Lafayette is in the center of one of the most 
productive and beautiful sections of Indiana, and 
from an early day has been a prosperous and 
highly intelligent community. It is now the seat 
of Purdue University, though at the time of Mr. 
Joyce's pastorates there that vigorous college had 
not yet been founded. Methodism was strong 
through all that region, and Lafayette was the 
head of one of the principal districts of the Con- 
ference and State. 

On completing his tliird year at Ninth Street, 
the Conference met in that Church. Bishop Clark, 
who presided, was so impressed with the ability of 



Ten Years in Lafayette 



43 



Mr. Joyce that, though the latter was only thirty- 
two years of age, he made him presiding elder of 
the Lafayette District. Presiding elder after ten 
years in the ministry, and that in one of the strong 
Conferences of the Central West! It is doubtful 
if the case had been paralleled in the history of 
Methodism in the settled part of the country, save 
in the career of Bishop Walden. The exigencies 
of frontier or missionary work have occasionally 
required this early promotion of men to the pre- 
siding eldership. 

Mr. Joyce bore his honors with becoming mod- 
esty and discharged with zeal and care the duties 
of his office. Those who knew him in those days 
say that he was especially insistent on his young 
men buying books and preparing themselves care- 
fully for their pulpit work. It is not surprising 
that he drew the young men of the Conference to 
him with the strongest bonds, and that to many 
of them he became their ideal. An interesting pic- 
ture of him at this period is that drawn by the 
Rev. E. R. Dille, D. D., of First Church, Oakland, 
California, for many years past one of the leaders 
of our Pacific Coast Methodism : 

"I first knew Isaac W. Joyce in 1867, when he 
was presiding elder of the Lafayette District, 
Northwest Indiana Conference. I see him yet in 
my mind's eye as he appeared then to my boyish 



44 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



vision — tall, straight, slender, a broad, white brow, 
a pale, intellectual face, a flashing eye, a com- 
manding presence — a born orator, a born leader 
of men. 

"Already in his young manhood his preaching 
was characterized by that fire and fervor, and that 
rare, magnetic quality which ever made him a 
master of assemblies. I remember to this day a 
sermon he preached in 1868 on Tor we can do 
nothing against the truth, but for the truth' — and 
its divisions seemed like links of steel over which 
leaped a line of electric fire. 

"Dr. Joyce, in 1870, gave me license to preach, 
and while we w^ere in the same Conference, and 
indeed ever since, he has been my father in the 
Gospel — my guide, philosopher, and friend. From 
him as much as from any other man have I re- 
ceived my inspiration and my ideals." 

As the end of his term as presiding elder drew 
near, he frequently expressed his eagerness to re- 
turn to the pastorate. His affectionate nature 
longed for the close association with the people 
which the pastorate alone furnishes. 

It was a notable compliment and the strongest 
possible indorsement of his seven years' work in 
Lafayette that Trinity Church of that city, 
the leading Church of the Conference, invited him 
to become its pastor at the close of his term on 
the district, in the fall of 1873. At the Confer- 
ence in September the appointment was made. 



Ten Years in Lafayette. 



45 



His three years at that Church were full of 
hard work. They taxed him to the utmost, not 
only because the highly intelligent character of 
the congregation required the most careful prepa- 
ration for his pulpit efforts, but because he had 
been so many years in that city, as that not only 
every sermon, but every plan and method, had to 
be new — had to be coined fresh from the mint of 
his resources. 

It was a notable pastorate, and the fruit of it 
remains stilL In addition to his pulpit and pas- 
toral work he taught a large Bible class of adults, 
which practically amounted to preaching a third 
sermon, each Sabbath. But the appreciation with 
which his work was received, and his constantly 
enlarging influence, made his labors a joy to him. 
'In his letters to his most intimate friends the high 
spirits bubble over frequently. Writing to an in- 
"^timate friend, the Rev. William McK. Darwood, 
at this time, he says: 

"Lafayette, Indiana, Oct. 10, 1873. 
"My Dear Brother Darwood: 

"I received your letter and was much pleased 
to hear from you all. We are in good health and 
about as busy as you ever sa.w white folks. The 
Trinity people have given me a hearty welcome, 
and everything is just as nice and pleasant as I 
could desire. ... I am at work among my own 
people, and am having a good time. . . . Every- 



46 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



body is in a good humor, and I am feeling splen- 
didly. My congregations are much better than 
I thought they would be, and members of the OfB- 
cial Board tell me that they are satisfied that in 
three months the congregations will be double the 
present size. Since my return home (from Confer- 
ence) I have had four funerals and four weddings. 
Funerals are not pleasant services ; but the wed- 
dings — the more the merrier! 

"Yours ever, L W. Joyce." 

Writing six weeks later to the same friend, 
Mr. Joyce said: 

"I am having the best time I have ever had in 
all my life. True, my work is very hard; but my 
congregations are so very nice and kind, and my 
Church is so perfectly splendid, and all my sur- 
roundings so agreeable, that I am very happy in 
my work. My congregations have almost doubled. 
My Sunday-school is growing. My own class has 
grown from ten to forty persons. My salary is 
to be two thousand dollars." 

A little later he conducted his winter's revival 
meetings, having a successful series, and doing 
the work himself from night to night. A char- 
acteristic utterance to a friend, in a letter written 
February 9, 1874, was: "God is, by His grace, 
giving us the victory. I am determined to work 
for His glory with all the power I have." 

His Trinity Church pastorate covered the years 



Ten Years in Lafayette. 



47 



of financial panicj which began in 1873, Writing 
to his friend Darwood in October, 187^5 be said: 

"Money is very close and business dull, but I 
believe God will turn all this to the spiritual good 
of the people. If souls are converted, we can very 
well consent to live on a few less dollars." 

In March, 1875, Mr. Joyce suffered a very 
severe illness. For a time it was doubtful whether 
he would recover. Congestion of the brain was 
the diagnosis. On rallying from this, rheumatism 
set in, and for weeks he was confined to the house. 
When able to travel he and Mrs. Joyce took a trip 
to Baltimore, and he returned to his work after 
some weeks much strengthened. During all the 
rest of his Lafayette pastorate, however, his health 
remained precarious, verging on nervous prostra- 
tion, the result of almost continuous overwork. 

When the time drew near that his pastoral term 
at Lafayette should cease, the brethren of the offi- 
ciary met and adopted the following resolutions: 

"Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church, La- 
fayette, Indiana. 

"At a meeting of the Official Board of Trinity 
Methodist Episcopal Church, held on Monday 
evening, July 31, 1876, Henry Taylor in the chair, 
and Charles A. Reynolds Secretary, the following 
resolutions were adopted: 

"Whereas, In conformity with the laws of our 



48 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



Church it becomes necessary that the pastoral rela- 
tion existing between our dear brother, Isaac W. 
Joyce, and this congregation, shall terminate with 
the present Conference year ; therefore be it 

^'Resolved, That in severing this relation we 
lose a faithful and tender shepherd, a wise coun- 
selor and teacher, a true friend, and a ready sym- 
pathizer, 

^'Resolved, That wherever he may go, he bears 
with him our earnest and united prayers for his 
success, health, and happiness ; and should he ever, 
in the good providence of God, be returned to us, 
he will receive a hearty welcome. 

''Resolved, That we herein express to Brother 
Joyce our appreciation of his efforts in the ex- 
position of Scripture truth, his zeal for the salva- 
tion of souls, especially of our young people, his 
watchful care over the lambs of the flock, his 
promptness in meeting all the issues brought be- 
fore the Church and the public; and for the per- 
fect harmony and brotherly love which has pre- 
vailed during liis administration. 

''Resolved, That to his wife, our dear sister, 
Mrs. Carrie W. Joyce, we have become attached 
by the most endearing bonds, and for her faithful 
performance of all duties devolving upon her, for 
the manifestation of a calm, heroic faith in hours 
of trial, and for her devotion to the welfare of the 
young people under her care, we owe lasting grati- 
tude, and will ever cherish her memory. 

"Resolved, That a copy of these resolutions 
with our signatures attached be presented to our 
beloved pastor and his wife, and that they be pub- 



Ten Years in Lafayette. 



49 



lished in our city papers, and placed in full upon 
our book of records. 
"G. H. Hull, Henry Taylor, 

Curtis E. Wells, John L. Miller, 
William A. Ford, John C. Brockenbrough, 
H. T. Sample, William P. Heath, 
A. W. Abbott, Charles A. Reynolds, 
Jno. F. Smith, Robert W. Sample, 
C. G. Miller." 

The Bible class in the Sunday-school which 
Mr. Joyce had taught, presented him at a preced- 
ing Christmas with an expensive and beautiful gold 
watch, which he carried until his death. He cher- 
ished it with peculiar pleasure. Indeed, the mem- 
ory of his entire Lafayette pastorate was always 
a very precious one to him. 

When it came time to leave the city where he 
had spent ten happy years, and where he had be- 
come so integral a part of the city's very life, 
and especially of the life of Methodism, it was like 
the breaking of heart-strings. The packing up 
and storing away of goods, and the saying of 
"good-bye," was as sad as a funeral. "The pas- 
tor came to the city in the centennial year of 
American Methodism, 1866, and left it in the cen- 
tennial year of American independence, 1876." 

During Mr. Joyce's last year at Lafayette, 
the degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred 
upon him by Dickinson College, Considering the 
4 



50 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce, 



fact that he had not yet reached his fortieth birth- 
day, and remembering also the standing of the in- 
stitution, the honor was a notable one. The degree 
of Doctor of Laws was given him by the University 
of the Pacific in 1891. 

At the session of the Northwest Indiana Con- 
ference in September, 1875, his brethren in the 
ministry paid him the high mark of confidence of 
electing him a reserve delegate to the General Con- 
ference, which was to meet the following May in 
Baltimore. 

Upon his election as bishop, twelve years later, 
Dr. Joyce received from Lafayette the following 
telegram : 

"Br. 1. W. Joyce, 

''Methodist General Conference, New York: 
"All Lafayette joins in extending congratu- 
lations to Bishop Joyce." 

His Lafayette friends were loyal and loving 
through all the years. 



CHAPTER VI. 



Pastorates at Baltimore and Greencastle. 
A T the close of ten years of service in Lafay- 



ette as pastor and presiding elder. Dr. 



— Joyce took a supernumerary relation in 
his Conference for one year, as his health was im- 
paired. For several years he had had a continual 
fight with ill-health. Nervous prostration seemed 
imminent. At this time Mr. Charles J. Baker, 
a v/ealthy layman of Baltimore, came to Lafayette 
on a visit to Dr. and Mrs. Joyce, the latter being 
his cousin by marriage. Mr. Baker was the lead- 
ing spirit of Bethany Church, Baltimore, an inde- 
pendent Methodist congregation. Mr. Baker pro- 
posed that Dr. Joyce become its pastor tempo- 
rarily. On receiving an invitation from the Church 
also. Dr. Joyce consented. And in October, 1876, 
he became pastor of that Church, situated in the 
western part of the city of Baltimore. The ar- 
rangements were such that Dr. Joyce could reside 
in the country, at Athol, at the beautiful home of 
Mr. Baker, and give such time as his health per- 
mitted to the work of the Church in the city. Dr. 




51 



52 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



Joyce remained until the following July, and 
found the year's stay very beneficial to his health. 
At the close of the year he was urgently solicited 
to remain at Bethany Church. This he would not 
consent to do, except on the condition that Bethany 
Church would become a regular Methodist Epis- 
copal Church. Issues growing out of the Civil 
War rendered this impossible at that time, so Dr. 
Joyce turned his face back to his old home in 
Indiana. Twenty years later Bethany Church did 
come into our Methodist Episcopal Church, and is 
now one of our regular Baltimore appointments. 
It is of interest that the change was effected dur- 
ing the pastorate of John W. Jones, another In- 
diana man, who w1as invited to Bethany Church 
through the influence of Bishop Joyce. 

When Dr. Joyce returned to Indiana in the 
fall of 1877, it was with the full expectation of 
being appointed to Meridian Street Church, In- 
dianapolis. Bishop Ames had assured him that all 
arrangements had been made. But in some way 
the plan was frustrated, and he returned to his old 
Conference. Immediately he was invited to the 
pastorate of Roberts Chapel, the leading Church 
of Greencastle, and one of the strongest in the 
State. He felt great hesitancy about accepting 
this invitation, because Greencastle was the seat of 
Asbury University, and he feared that his scho- 



At Baltimore and Greencastle. 53 



lastic acquirements were not sufficient to meet the 
demands. Practically all the Faculty and nearly 
all the students attended that Church. 

The bishop who presided at the Conference 
assured him, however, that his fears were ground- 
less, and he was appointed to Roberts Chapel, now 
College Avenue, Greencastle. This was in Sep- 
tember, 1877. On arriving at Greencastle, Dr. 
Joyce set to work with his customar}'- energy. He 
soon became acquainted with his entire constitu- 
ency, both town and college. 

He was exceedingly popular with the students. 
No pastor that ever served Greencastle, in either 
College Avenue or Locust Street Church, has had 
a larger hearing from the student body of old 
Asbury. His geniality, sympathy with young life, 
and alert interest in everything that concerned the 
students, in their sports and studies as well as in 
their religious welfare, were responsible for this, 
while his ability as a preacher won their respect. 
Many entered the ministry or missionary work as 
the ' result of his influence. Among the students 
who shared his pastoral care were three Japanese, 
who were members of the Class of 1881 — Messrs. 
Kawamura, Chinda, and Sato. They were fre- 
quently entertained in his home, and were members 
of his Church. Mr. Kawamura died before com- 
pleting his college course. But Aimaro Sato and 



54 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



Suitka Chinda graduated, and have since attained 
to international reputation as diplomats in the 
service of their native Japan. Mr. Chinda is am- 
bassador of Japan at the Austrian Court; while 
Mr. Sato has served at various foreign courts in a 
representative capacity, and was secretary of the 
Peace Commission of Japan which held its sessions 
at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, at the close of 
the Russian-Japanese War. After becoming 
bishop. Dr. Joyce met Mr. Sato in Tokio, and 
had a long talk with him over old times. When 
on his episcopal tour of China, Dr. Joyce also met 
Mr. Chinda in Shanghai, where the latter was then 
Japanese consul, and found that he was a regular 
attendant and member of our Methodist Church 
there. Who knows how much of the good feeling 
of Japan toward America is due to the full insight 
into the Christian home and heart life of America, 
as well as into the school and commercial life, 
which such Japanese leaders as Mr. Sato and Mr. 
Chinda enjoyed? 

Yet popular as he was with the students, he 
was equally so with the towns-people. It is doubt- 
ful if any preacher who served there ever stirred 
the town more profoundly. One of the vivid rec- 
ollections of the writer's boyhood is of a large class 
being received into full membership in old Roberts 
Chapel, among whom were some of the solid busi- 



At Baltimore and Greencastle. 55 



ness men of the town, and men who had been hith- 
erto considered impervious to religious influence. 
So great was the prosperity of the Church that 
Dr. Joyce's pastorate has ever since been a sort 
of gauge by which all other years have been esti- 
mated. 

It throws an interesting sidelight on Dr. 
Joyce's decision of character to learn that his pas- 
torate there came near ending at the close of his 
first year. Roberts Chapel was an old structure. 
The congregation during Dr. Joyce's ministry 
overflowed the building. He very much desired 
a new church. With this most of his official men 
were in sympathy. But there were enough con- 
servatives on the Official Board, who also hap- 
pened to be the men of largest means, to lead to 
an adverse decision on the new church proposition. 
It happened that at this juncture an invitation 
reached him from Trinity Church at Louis- 
ville, Kentucky, our leading Methodist Church in 
that thriving city. Though not quite clear as to 
what was best, it seemed on the whole a provi- 
dential opening, and Dr. Joyce accepted it, sub- 
ject to the decision of the bishops involved in the 
transfer. The transfer was actually eff'ected, and, 
as we heard the bishop say to the Kentucky Con- 
ference in 1903, he was "once a member of the 
Kentucky Conference for twenty-four hours." 



56 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



But the Greencastle brethren made such a strong 
protest against Dr. Joyce's removal, sending a 
committee representing both the Church and the 
university to Covington, Kentucky, where the Con- 
ference was in session, and at the same time gave 
to Dr. Joyce such ample assurances that a new 
church should be built if he would remain, that 
Bishop Peck re- transfer red him to the Northwest 
Indiana Conference, and he continued his work at 
Greencastle. Steps were immediately taken to 
build a new church, and the present commodious 
and beautiful College Avenue Church was erected. 
Dr. Hillary A. Gobin, professor in DePauw Uni- 
versity and for years its president, characterizes 
Dr. Joyce's pastorate at Greencastle as follows: 

"It is well known that our Churches in college 
towns afford the most difficult and important pas- 
toral charges. The unusually large proportion of 
young people in the congregations, their alertness 
of mind respecting the matter and manner of pub- 
lic discourse, the discussions in lecture rooms and 
lyceum halls, the keen scent for '^heresy' in doctrine, 
and the tendency to ^size up' the preacher as well 
as the professor, make the pastorate of college 
audiences a serious situation for the minister of the 
Gospel. But all these conditions are advantages 
for the superior man. This was the case in the 
career of Isaac W. Joyce in Greencastle. At that 
time his congregation met in an ancient and plain 
brick church called Roberts Chapel. This Church 
had been served with eminent success by some of 



At Baltimore and Greencastle, 



57 



the ablest men in the Conference. But the crisp, 
accurate, original, and fervent sermons of Brother 
Joyce crowded the edifice to its utmost capacity 
with eager listeners. Thej^ did not hear simply to 
be entertained. The Word took root, and conver- 
sions were numerous and abiding. His three years' 
pastorate was one continual revival, not in the sense 
of continuous meetings, but in the sense of increas- 
ing spiritual power. The whole community, col- 
lege, town, and even county, were awakened to in- 
creased interest in the Christian life. Students, in 
letters and visits to their homes, spoke of the power 
and blessedness of the preaching of their pastor. 
The number of converts in this revival who after- 
wards entered the ministry and missionary work 
was very considerable. The bishop remarked that 
in his Conferences and travels he was surprised at 
the number who came to him and referred to their 
conversion under his pastorate in Greencastle. 

"Without neglecting the towns-people, he was 
eminently effective as the pastor of the students. 
A layman in the Church remarked, 'The boys have 
worn out the hall carpet in running to Joyce's 
study to consult him about their speeches.' There 
were two reasons for this. In the first place the 
students admired him as an ideal public speaker. 
In the second place Brother Joyce entered into 
such hearty sympathy with them in all their stu- 
dent affairs, and particularly their intellectual ef- 
forts, that they alwaj's found him easily approach- 
able, the very impersonation of 'brotherly kind- 
ness,' and most judicious and helpful in his crit- 
icisms and suggestions. 



58 Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



"Earl}^ in his pastorate it was evidenced that a 
new church building must be provided. A new and 
improved site was selected, and a large and splen- 
didly arranged edifice was built. This church has 
been regarded as a model in size, proportion, con- 
venience, and adaptability to the needs of the Col- 
lege Avenue congregation. Taking all things into 
account, the pastorate of Bishop Joyce in Green- 
castle was one of the brightest, most important, 
and fruitful chapters in a career full of honor, 
power, and blessedness." 

At the Annual Conference session of 1879, Dr. 
Joyce was elected a delegate to the General Con- 
ference of 1880. It is alwaj^s an honor to be so 
preferred by one's brethren, and it is especially so 
when one is chosen from the pastorate. Tliis elec- 
tion had a very important aftermath. The Gen- 
eral Conference of 1880 met in Cincinnati. Dr. 
Joyce took an active part in its proceedings, being 
secretary of its Committee on Itinerancy. He 
preached during the Conference at one of the Sun- 
day services at St. Paul Church, then one of the 
two leading Methodist Churches of Cincinnati. 
His personality and sermon so impressed the con- 
gregation that a little later he was invited to be- 
come its pastor; and in September following he 
was transferred to the Cincinnati Conference and 
stationed at St. Paul Church. 




ST, PAUL METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH 
CINCINNATI 



CHAPTER VII. 



Cincinnati Pastorates. 

IT was in Cincinnati that the climax of Dr. 
Joyce's pastoral success was achieved. He 
was just entering his prime, lacking one 
month of being forty-four. He went to the lead- 
ing Church of the city, St. Paul, one which had 
long occupied a commanding place in Western 
Methodism. While it had begun to feel the move- 
ment towards the suburbs, which has since taken 
away some of its financial and nujnerical strength, 
it held the position of leadership in the sisterhood 
of Cincinnati Methodist Churches. 

On arriving in the city early in September, 
1880, Dr. Joyce threw himself with enthusiasm 
into every department of Church activity. Always 
forceful in the pulpit and often eloquent, he 
preached to steadily increasing audiences. He pos- 
sessed an unusual measure of what is called mag- 
netism, which when analyzed is found to consist 
largely of broad and strong sympathies, or heart 
power. He was alert, aggressive, optimistic, and 
tireless, and the whole Church soon felt the stimu- 

59 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



lus of his leadership. His prayer-meetings were 
largely attendedj and were seasons of spiritual re- 
freshing. He gave a great deal of attention to 
the Sunday-school, and soon knew the scholars as 
well as teachers and officers by name. How fully 
he secured the confidence and co-operation of the 
young people is shown by the resolutions of the 
Official Board at the expiration of his pastorate, 
which make special mention of his strong hold on 
the young life of the Church. 

All this was accomplished by hard pastoral 
work. Dr. Joyce was not one of those city pas- 
tors who think their duty ended with their Sunday 
discourses. During his first six weeks in Cincin- 
nati he called on one hundred and thirteen of his 
families. He visited faithfully and steadily. Un- 
less there was special reason, his calls were brief. 
A few words of inquiry about the children of the 
home, a word of counsel and comfort to the mother, 
and then, if opportunity offered, a brief prayer; 
and he was away almost before the family realized 
it. It was by such celerity that he could do so 
much. Those who think great city pastorates suc- 
ceed by force of circumstances are in error. The 
distractions are infinite in number and variety. 
Success comes only as the result of incessant toil. 
Dr. Joyce found it so. 

He had a marvelous memory for both faces and 



Cincinnati Pastorates. 



61 



names. Illustrations might be given of his meeting 
people for only a moment, and under distracting 
conditions, yet of his remembering them years 
afterwards and the circumstances under which he 
met them. 

He knew every member of his Church by name, 
even to the smallest children. After the Harrison 
revival in Cincinnati, which brought hundreds into 
St. Paul Church, he knew all the members, new 
and old, and their residences, their places of 
business, who of them were in school, and the 
circumstances of their lives. He was a pastor in- 
deed. He was more than once seen carrying bas- 
kets of food to some needy family or individual. 

When leaving the St. Paul Church pastorate 
he wrote out from memory the entire Church rec- 
ord. It was found to be absolutely correct — so 
correct that a few names that had been omitted 
from the record by accident were found on the list 
that came from the memory and heart of this faith- 
ful shepherd of souls. This same memory for 
names and individual conditions of men he retained 
when a bishop, giving him a mastery of details 
in his cabinet work, whenever that work touched 
a man whom he had ever seen. 

Writing to an intimate friend, the Rev. W. 
McK. Darwood, six weeks after he had begun his 
work in Cincinnati, Dr. Joyce said: 



62 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



"My Dear and Trusted Brother: 

"Yours of the 15th inst. made me glad all over; 
and your wife's photograph walked into our sit- 
ting-room yesterday and made us happier than 
ever. Thanks for both letter and picture. 

"How glad I am that you have a nice place, 
so kind a people, and so large an audience, with 
inviting prospects of success. You know that I 
am as much interested in your success as I am in 
my own. I trust that every hope will be fully 
realized, and that you will win many souls to 
Christ. How strange it seems that we are so far 
from each other ! I feel very lonely here sometim.es, 
and think of the days of the past, and in memory 
re-live them. 

"The brethren here treat me with utmost cour- 
tesy. (I mean the ministers.) My own Church 
members are exceedingly kind and attentive. I 
have several of the leading men of the city to 
preach to. My audiences are steadily growing. 
The prayer-meetings are very large and spiritual, 
and I am now confident that I will pay oflF the 
entire Church debt, thirty thousand dollars. 
Everybody seems happy and hopeful. It costs 
more to live here ; but it is better living, and I am 
satisfied. You know we have one of the best par- 
sonages in the whole Church. It is well furnished, 
and we enjoy it greatly. I have received nine per- 
sons by letter, and five on probation. I have visited 
one hundred and thirteen of my families, and have 
been here less than seven weeks. We are invited 
out two, three, or four times a week. Frank is in 
Greencastle. He will be home for Thanksgiving 
dinner. 



Cincinnati Pastorates. 



63 



^'How I wish I could step into your study to- 
night, or you into mine, and have a dear old-fash- 
ioned talk ! How it would strengthen and help me ! 

"Now I hope to hear from you often, and I 
promise you prompt replies. Carrie joins me in 
much love to you and all the family, 

"I am the same old friend, 

"Isaac W. Joyce." 

From the beginning of his work in Cincinnati, 
Dr. Joyce felt that the supreme need was a great 
revival of religion. For this he prayed and la- 
bored. And during his second year, during the 
meetings led by Thomas Harrison, the evangelist, 
the great revival came. Every night for four 
months the church was thronged with people. The 
conversions reached fourteen hundred. And St. 
Paul Church shared more largely than any other 
Church in the results. According to Bishop Wiley 
there were twenty-five hundred conversions in Cin- 
cinnati and vicinity as a result of this revival. 
The influence of these meetings extended far and 
wide. All through the West they were talked 
about. The writer was then a boy entering col- 
lege, but he distinctly recalls the interest they ex- 
cited both in the college and Church, although 
over two hundred miles away. Perhaps the largest 
effect of this revival was the way in which it 
kindled the imagination and aroused the faith of 
ministers and laity all over the West. It is not to 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



be doubted that at least a hundred revivals sprung 
up as the result of this one; somewhat as in 1858 
revivals broke out all over the country as the result 
of the spreading of the story of the Fulton Street 
(New York) prayer-meeting revival. The result 
of these labors at St. Paul Church was a greatly 
enlarged Church membership. The number of ac- 
cessions according to the Official Board's statement 
being "unprecedented in the history of Cincinnati 
Methodism." The finances of the Church went 
upward with a bound, answering, as always, to the 
spiritual life of the people. Even though St. 
Paul Church was beginning to feel the drain to 
the suburbs, which has since so seriously affected 
all of our down-town Churches, yet such was the 
organizing generalship of Dr. Joyce, and so genu- 
ine and satisfying the tide of spiritual life gener- 
ated during his pastorate, as that the Church was 
alive and thrilling to its very finger-tips with social 
and religious enthusiasm and activity. At the close 
of his pastorate the officiary of the Church adopted 
the following resolutions: 

"Cincinnati, July 8, 1883. 
"At a special meeting of the Official Board of 
St. Paul Methodist Episcopal Church, Brother 
William Glenn was called to the chair and John P. 
Epply was elected secretary. A motion was then 
made and carried that a committee of five be ap- 
pointed to draft resolutions expressive of the feel- 



Cincinnati Pastorates, 



65 



ings of the Church and OfBcial Board as to the 
ministry of Dr. Joyce in our Church. 

"At a meeting held your committee are united 
in saying that it was in their opinion a wise and 
happy selection when Dr. Joyce, with his faithful 
Christian wife, was placed in charge of St. Paul 
Methodist Episcopal Church. Through their la- 
bors the conversions and accessions to St. Paul 
have been unprecedented in the history of Meth- 
odism in Cincinnati. Their united labors and vis- 
itations among the people, and their labors in the 
Sabbath-school and social services of the Church, 
have been OTeatlv blessed under God in brinmno' 
young people into the Church. And not only so, 
but their efforts to instruct the young in the doc- 
trines of Christ have been largely rewarded by giv- 
ing to the Church many intelligent workers in the 
Church and Sabbath-school. When Dr. Joyce 
came to St. Paul the Church had a bonded and 
floating debt of over thii-ty thousand dollars, all 
of which has been provided for during his ministry 
among us. And a very large share of the credit 
is due to him in raising this heavy burden from the 
Church. He in the economy of the Church will 
soon close his labors with us. He will leave us with 
the Church clear of debt, with a very large in- 
crease of intelligent Christian workers as trophies 
of his ministry among us, both in and out of the 
pulpit. 

'^We commend him with all our hearts to the 
people of a sister charge in this city, bespeaking 
for him a hearty welcome and cordial support. 

"Our hearts will go with liim to Ins new charge 
5 



66 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



in an earnest God-speed. And we shall not cease 
to pray that he may be as great a blessing to the 
people of his new charge as he has been to us.'' 

At the close of his pastorate at St. Paul, the 
three years' limit being then in force, Dr. Joyce 
was appointed to Trinity Church, six blocks away. 
It was at that time second in strength to the St. 
Paul congregation. He was appointed at the 
request of the Trinity Official Board. 

Here his work went forward after the same vig- 
orous fashion as at St. Paul. The Western 
Christian Advocate of the last of October, 1883, 
six or eight weeks after his taking charge at Trin- 
ity, said: 

"The advices from Trinity Methodist Epis- 
copal Church, at Cincinnati, are of a most en- 
couraging nature. Under the pastorate of Rev. 
Dr. Joyce, late of St. Paul Church, the congrega- 
tions have doubled in size and are growing steadily. 
Trinity was in former years one of the strongest 
charges in Ohio, and with her central position, a 
fine property free from debt, a united and active 
membership, and good leadership, there is no reason 
why she should not regain her best position of other 
years, and more. The reports of the late Quar- 
terly Conference showed every branch of the 
Church actively at work, with promising results 
already visible. The congregations are the largest 
since 1873." 



Cincinnati Pastorates. 



While Dr. Joyce was pastor at Trinity Church 
the terrible court-house riot occurred, one of the 
worst in this country, in which scores of men 
were killed and injured. The rioters had pos- 
session of the city for several days. It was a time 
of great anxiety for Dr. and Mrs. Joyce, because 
their son, Frank, was captain of the Second Ohio 
Battery, which took a prominent part in suppress- 
ing the riot. Frank had graduated two years be- 
fore from DePauw University, where he had been 
at the head of the students' military battalion. He 
had also been at the head of the crack artillery 
company of the university, and had been its cap- 
tain when it won first honors in the national mili- 
tary drills over all others of the United States, 
not including, of course, those in the regular army. 
Writing to a friend of this riot, Dr. Joyce said: 

"I sent you the papers describing our terrible 
riot. We suffered greatly in mental anxiety on 
Frank's account. He was in that awful fight of 
Saturday night of March, 29th. He is captain of 
the Second Ohio Battery, and he and his men were 
under fire constantly during the time that the riot- 
ers were putting forth their strongest efforts to 
murder the soldiers. We did not sleep for three 
days and nights, so great was our anxiety. But 
God brought him and his men out of the fight 
without a single hurt. And we are thankful and 
profoundly happy." 



68 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



During Dr. Joj^ce's pastorate at Trinity 
Church he became greatly burdened about the con- 
dition of the city. He felt that nothing but a 
great religious awakening could create the new 
civic conscience which the community so sorely 
needed, and could turn the attention of careless, 
unawakened men to the needs of their souls. 

He went to the Preachers' Meeting and told 
them how he felt; and sought their co-operation 
in securing an evangelist then unknown in the 
North, but widely and favorably known in the 
South — the Rev. Sam P. Jones. The brethren did 
not see their way to co-operate. Bishop Walden, 
however, whom Dr. Joyce trusted and loved pro- 
foundly, encouraged him to secure him. So Dr. 
Joyce engaged Sam Jones himself, rented Music 
Hall, the largest building in the city, and assumed 
all the financial responsibility. Within a week 
after the meetings opened the whole city was inter- 
ested, and many pastors of various denominations, 
who had at first withheld their support, joined 
heartily in carrying forward the work. Hundreds 
were converted, and the city was aroused to a new 
civic righteousness. A great religious revival took 
place. While there were not a few critics of the 
peculiar personality and utterances of the evan- 
gelist, practically the whole city honored the pastor 
of such heroic faith and courage as to lead a move- 



Cincinnati Pastorates. 



69 



ment which affected in its sweep not only a great 
municipality, but other communities for hundreds 
of miles around. 

The Western Christian Advocate said edito- 
rially : 

"The recent revival of this city has attracted 
attention from all parts of the country. The in- 
terest awakened by Reverends Jones and Small, the 
Georgia evangelists, was the most remarkable in 
years, as evidenced by the vast crowd that con- 
stantly attended the meetings. A great revival 
like a great campaign must be controlled and di- 
rected by a master mind, and the success of the 
Cincinnati revival is due to the Rev. Isaac W. 
Joyce, of Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church, 
upon whose invitation the evangelists came here. 
Dr. Joyce is responsible for the two greatest re- 
vivals that have occurred in this city in the past 
thirty years — the one just closed, and the other 
known as the Harrison meeting, a few years ago, 
will long be remembered." 

Dr. Joyce had an influence in Cincinnati much 
beyond the bounds of his pastoral charges. He 
impressed himself on the general public. He took 
the liveliest interest in subjects aff^ecting the public 
welfare. He had correspondence with working- 
men and working girls about conditions of labor in 
the city. These letters he made the basis of ser- 
mons in which he pointed out vigorously the in- 



70 Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



dustrial sins of employers. Although pastor of 
many wealthy Methodists, he did not hesitate to 
expose the failures and neglects of the well-to-do. 
A man of strong sympathies, such as Bishop Joyce 
was, would feel bound to utter his protest against 
anything like oppression of the weak by the strong. 

Alwaj^s Dr. Joyce was the warm friend of the 
old soldiers. He frequently spoke before them. 
As a Decoration Day orator or Memorial Sunday 
preacher he was unexcelled. This brought liim 
into contact with a large number outside of his 
own Church circles and made him a well-known 
man in Cincinnati. It also gave liim a larger ac- 
quaintance with the newspaper men. And their 
good-will is an important factor in the success of 
a minister in the city. 

But it was in the management of the great 
revivals that Dr. Joj^ce impressed himself most 
strongly upon the city as a whole, and upon the 
Methodism of that part of the country. While 
at first in both the great revivals he was almost 
alone in the responsibility of these movements, yet 
each time the revivals grew to such proportions 
as to sweep in the other Churches and to awaken 
the interest and largely the co-operation of the 
entire Protestant religious public. It was these 
movements — the arranging of their details, the 
financing of them, the keeping them off the rocks, 
that displayed generalship. Perhaps it was this 



Cincinnati Pastorates. 



71 \ 



that more than anything else marked him as a 
really great executive and administrator, and di- 
rected the attention of the Church towards him as 
a suitable man for its greatest administrative 
office — the bishopric. 

The strength of Dr. Joyce's hold on the city 
was shown in nothing more clearly than by the 
fact that at the close of his pastorate of three 
years at Trinity, he was again invited to become 
pastor at St. Paul. In our judgment this was 
a greater compliment than if he had been invited 
to serve a seventh consecutive year at St. Paul. 
For these two Churches were but a few blocks 
apart, their territory practically the same, and the 
opportunities for friction must have been number- 
less. For a pastor to conduct himself with such 
wisdom, and at the same time with such successful 
aggressiveness, as that he was invited back to a 
third consecutive pastorate in the same territory, 
showed great practical wisdom in dealing with men. 
And it showed also that in the judgment of the 
princely laymen who composed the leadership of 
St. Paul Church the resources of Dr. Joyce had 
by no means been exhausted. During Dr. Joyce's 
years in the episcopal office some ministers criti- 
cised his intellectual qualifications, who, in their 
own pastorates, never came within gunshot of 
this magnificent achievement of Dr. Joyce in Cin- 



72 Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 

^■jiiLM — BW— — anil , 111 ■ I I III I I —Bg— oiJM ■mil ii 1 1 i— — i— bbbb— i i i 

cinnati. We speak of this here because of the dis- 
position in some quarters to measure preachers by 
purely academic and artificial standards, instead of 
by the influence and work actually achieved. A 
man is as great as the sum of his achievements. 
Yet men whose Churches die on their hands will 
send the dagger of unbrotherly and unchristian 
criticism into ministers who lead forlorn hopes to 
magnificent success, because those ministers do not 
happen to fulfill certain doctrinaire conceptions of 
sermonizing. 

It was this kind of criticism that caused Dr. 
Joyce the keenest sufi^ering of anything in his 
entire ministry, if we may judge from his letters. 
He was an exquisitely sensitive soul. The great- 
ness of his power to love was the measure of his 
power to suff^er. There were times when for weeks 
together he suffered so keenly under hostile criti- 
cism, and strangely enough from hostile ministerial 
criticism, as that he was tempted to resign his 
charge and leave the city. Writing to his friend, 
the Rev. William McK. Darwood, of New York 
City, he says: 

"My mental suffering was great, I assure you, 
and my spiritual nature was in an agony a great 
part of the time. I lived in torture for days. But 
I had two never- failing friends in all this fearful 
ordeal — my faithful wife, and the blessed God and 
Father of my salvation. Finally the sun began to 



Cincinnati Pastorates. 



73 



shine, I felt better. I left all with Him who is the 
Head of the Church. I gathered up my energies, 
concentrated my forces again, and went to work. 
God is wonderfully blessing my work. And while 
my bruised feelings pain me now and then, yet I 
am clinging to God with an unyielding grasp. I 
love Him supremely." 

Perhaps Dr. Joyce took to heart too deeply 
the criticisms that were directed against him. The 
tender mercies of politicians are never gentle, 
whether those politicians be ecclesiastical or secu- 
lar. When a man gets tall enough to be seen 
above the heads of the crowd he becomes a target 
for the shafts of rivals, not to say of the envious. 

But notwithstanding some unfriendly criti- 
cism. Dr. Joyce grew steadily in the favor of 
the city and of the Churches. He was elected 
president of the Interdenominational Ministerial 
Union, and also was one of the prominent officers 
of the Law and Order League. 

His influence extended out into the surround- 
ing States. He was called all over the Central 
West for special service for the Church. And it 
became evident that he was the most powerful 
factor in the life of Methodism in Cincinnati. 

In the fall of 1887 Dr. Joyce was elected a 
delegate to the General Conference, which was to 
meet the ensuing May in New York City. His 
election was an especially high honor in view of 



74 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



the small delegation which the Cincinnati Confer- 
ence could send — f our, while there were so many 
men of pronounced ability in its membership. And 
also it was a high compliment because of his being 
a transfer into the Conference. 

Writing to his friendj Dr. Darwood, in Janu- 
ary, I8885 D^*' Joyce said: 

"My time will be out here in the fall of 1889. 
But I have an idea that the General Conference 
will add another year to the pastoral term, making 
four years instead of three; and if that should be 
done, then I will stay here until 1890. I am glad 
to report to you that my work goes well. I have 
been like a race horse on the track, and from Mon- 
day morning until Sunday night I am on the rush. 
I am in the midst of a meeting, and you know what 
kind of work a protracted meeting means. 

"There is one thing that I would be especially 
glad to see; viz., that beginning at the close of 
General Conference, the great Methodist Episcopal 
Church would enter upon the next quadrennium 
with only one purpose inspiring all her move- 
ments — in every department of her organization — 
that is, to see how many souls this great Church 
could lead to Christ in the next four years. It 
seems to me that with our great army of ministers, 
and our nearly two million of members, we ought 
to do grand work for God and humanity." 

Dr. Joyce's expectation about returning to 
Cincinnati was not fulfilled for reasons that become 
apparent in our next chapter. 



CHAPTER VIII, 

Expected Bishop. 

IT would be inaccurate to say that when the 
Board of Bishops nominates a minister to 
serve as fraternal delegate to one of the 
great sister denominations of Christendom, they 
place that minister in nomination for the office of 
bishop. Doubtless no such consideration ever in- 
fluenced the action of the Episcopal Board. Yet 
such a nomination carries with it in so marked a 
degree the stamp of approval of that board — and 
it is the most powerful group of men in the 
Church — as that its effect is scarcely less than if 
the purpose to place a man in nomination for the 
episcopacy were present. 

In 1886 Dr. Joyce was appointed fraternal 
delegate to the Methodist Church of Canada, 
which met in Metropolitan Methodist Church, To- 
ronto, in September. He was now in the prime 
of his powers — ^just fifty. The Montreal Globe 
gave the following description of his reception by 
the Canadian brethren: 

"The secretary then read the credentials of 
Rev. Dr. Joyce, of the Cincinnati Conference, 

75 



76 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



after which the Chairman introduced that gentle- 
man to the Conference. Dr. Joyce has a fine 
physique and a most intellectual face, while his 
manner of speaking is slow and deliberate. He 
asked the audience to try and picture the astonish- 
ment of John Wesley, if that great father of 
Methodism could look in upon them that evening, 
and see as the fruits of his efforts representatives 
of grand and growing Methodist Churches gath- 
ered from all parts of the world. The speaker 
then dwelt upon the great work that might be 
done by Methodists in the United States. The 
great problems that were vexing them there every 
year more and more, were lawlessness, infidelity, 
intemperance, and Mormonism. 

"As to Mormonism, the Christian people of 
the United States and the Government of the 
United States were determined that it should be 
stamped out. The Methodist Episcopal Church 
was one of the great weapons with which they were 
to contest and overcome these evils. The Church 
was united there and spoke with one voice. Other 
great weapons of warfare were the Sunday-school 
and the press of the Church. 

"Touching on the educational question, he said 
they had in the United States some years ago con- 
siderable trouble over the question of colleges. 
Every little town wanted a college or a univer- 
sity or a high school or a seminary or something 
of the kind, and in a good many cases the small 
towns secured the colleges. But they had found 
out their mistake and had merged the smaller col- 
leges into the larger ones, and now had great col- 



Elected Bishop, 



77 



leges and universities only at the most central and 
most useful points in the country. (Applause.) 

"The speaker then told of the strength of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States, 
and said he hoped and believed that before long 
the Methodist bodies of the United States would 
unite and form one great Church as they had done 
in Canada. (Applause.) He referred most en- 
couragingly to the missionary work of the Church 
in his country, and brought thunders of applause 
by touching on Bishop Taylor's grand work in 
Africa, and referring to the great missionary as 
the greatest hero since St. Paul and Martin Luther. 
The address was listened to with the deepest atten- 
tion, and frequently broken by applause. 

"Dr. Sutherland moved a congratulatory reso- 
lution to the speaker, which was carried with ac- 
clamation." 

In May, 1888, Dr. Joyce journeyed to New 
York City, together with the other Cincinnati Con- 
ference delegates, Charles H. Payne, Adna B. 
Leonard, and Jeremiah H. Bayliss. Dr. Joyce 
was the last of the group elected by his Conference. 
But it was doubly complimentary to him that he 
should have been elected at all in view of the fact 
that he was a "transfer," having been a member 
of the Conference but seven years at the time of 
his election. Four years before, in 1884, he had 
been chosen a reserve delegate. 

Dr. Joyce served as a member of the Committee 



78 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



on Itinerancy in the General Conference, and was 
the committee's secretar3^ 

Two important duties devolved upon him at 
this Conference. One was the making of a report 
to it of his official visit to the Methodist Church 
of Canada. The other was his memorial of Bishop 
Wiley. Perhaps this last event brought him more 
prominently before the Conference than any other 
act. His address on Bishop Wiley was a model 
of good taste and sympathetic delineation. 

Dr. Joyce and Bishop Wiley had been the 
closest of friends. On his arrival in Cincinnati as 
pastor of St. Paul Church Dr. Joyce had been 
received to the heart of Bishop Wiley. The inti- 
macy begun then lasted until Bishop Wiley's death 
in China in 1884. Bishop Wiley's family were 
members of Dr. Joyce's Church in Cincinnati. 
When in the city the bishop himself was in the 
congregation, one of Dr. Joyce's most sympathetic 
hearers. Bishop Wiley's daughter, Nellie, was con- 
verted under Dr. Joyce's ministry at St. Paul 
Church. And it was Dr. Joyce who broke to 
Bishop Wiley the sad news of the death of the 
bishop's only son, by burning in a great fire in 
a drugstore, when the latter was a Senior at the 
Ohio Wesley an. 

The General Conference of 1888 decided to 
elect five bishops. The office is a more important 



Elected Bishop. 



79 



one in the Methodist Episcopal Church than in 
any other Church employing the Episcopal form 
of supervision. The Protestant Episcopal Church 
has one hundred and two bishops in the United 
States, who supervise three quarters of a million 
members. The Roman Catholic Church has one hun- 
dred and six archbishops and bishops jwho super- 
vise eleven million communicants. The Methodist 
Episcopal Church has (at the time we write) 
fifteen bishops, only twelve of whom are assigned 
to the Conferences in the United States. These 
supervise sixteen thousand churches and three mil- 
lion members. The bishops appoint the pastors 
to the Churches, every appointment being reviewed 
and fixed each year. In addition to this most re- 
sponsible duty the bishops are members of the 
several great benevolence boards of the Church 
which administer millions of money every year. 
They determine the course of study of all the 
preachers who enter the ministry, and a course of 
study for an army of local preachers. They su- 
pervise the theological seminaries of the Church, 
having veto power over the selection of their teach- 
ers. They scrutinize every part of the work of 
the Church and make recommendations concerning 
it to the General Conference. They elect the fra- 
ternal representatives to the various sister denomi- 
nations of Christians. And in addition to all these 



80 Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



functions, by virtue of the life tenure of their 
ofBce and the extremely wide acquaintance they 
enjoy, they are able to exercise a personal influ- 
ence which is no less than extraordinary. 

Hence it is that the Episcopac}^ is looked upon 
within the Methodist Episcopal Church as being 
the highest position in point of honor, and the 
highest in its opportunities for usefulness, of all 
the positions in the gift of the Church. And 
friends of preachers can think of no better wish 
than that they shall be elected to the Episcopacy. 
The old Methodist mother of William McKinley 
when asked if she were not delighted over her son's 
election as President of the United States, replied: 
^^Yes, but I would rather have seen him a Methodist 
bishop." 

No doubt there will be found those who would 
dissent from the foregoing observations and ad- 
duce some vigorous reasons for another view. And 
three men have declined elections to that office. 
Nevertheless the views just expressed state the 
general feeling about the office among the people 
called Methodists. 

On May 22d the balloting began. On the first 
ballot eighty-four persons were voted for. Dr. 
Joyce stood fifth in the total vote received, having 
145 votes out of a total of 447. On the second 
ballot he received 217 votes, and came fourth in 



Elected Bishop. 



81 



the total number received. On the third ballot 
he received 260 votes, and came up to third place. 
On this ballot Dr. J. H. Vincent and Dr. J. N. 
FitzGerald were elected. On the fourth ballot 
Dr. Joyce led with 265 votes; and on the fifth 
ballot he was elected with 326 votes out of a 
total of 449. His was the largest vote received by 
any bishop elected. 

It is of interest to recall that three of the four 
delegates of the Cincinnati Conference received 
votes for bishop, and all were chosen to General 
Conference positions, a fact probably unduplicated 
in any General Conference election in the history 
of the Church. Dr. Bayliss, editor of the Western 
Christian Advocate, received 15 votes for bishop; 
and Dr. Charles H. Payne, President of the Ohio 
Wesley an University, received 148. In addition 
to this. Dr. Cranston, who was living at Cincin- 
nati, though a member of another Conference, re- 
ceived 144 votes. 

The correspondent of the Cincinnati Commer- 
cial-Gazette at New York said: 

"The election of Dr. Joyce was a good deal 
of a surprise to many in this region (New York). 
It was a magnificent triumph that grows on those 
who study it. . . . He was comparatively unknown 
throughout the East, and consequently had not 
much hold here. His friends, however, both within 
the Conference and outside of it, were not a few, 
6 



82 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



and through them his superior qualities were 
brought to the attention of the delegates. His 
paper on Bishop Wiley^ his presencej his manner, 
and his spirit, so won upon the Conference that 
upon the fifth ballot, as the third man chosen, he 
went in with such a vote as was never in any other 
instance given to any man in his election to the 
Episcopacy in the Methodist Episcopal Church. 
His triumph is complete. He is believed to be a 
clean, strong man, full of manly sympathies and 
parts, and a born leader among men, while modest 
and affable in an unusual degree.'' 

Of Bishop Joyce's election. Dr. James M. 
Buckley, in his "History of Methodism," says: 

"His marked efficiency as a pastor and evangel- 
ist, his prudence and fervency, commended him to 
the large number who justly believed that the pas- 
torate should always be represented upon the Board 
of Bishops." 

Of the ten men leading in the votes for bishop 
in the General Conference of 1888, only three were 
from the pastorate. The others were in secretarial 
or educational work. Dr. Buckley said of Bishop 
Joyce's election after the latter's death: 

"These things gave his candidacy the benefit 
of a spontaneous impetus. He was a pastor. Al- 
ready two general officials had been elected. He 
had always been a pastor, excepting a brief term 
as presiding elder, which office in reality does not 



Elected Bishop. 



83 



divorce a man from the pastorate, since he has 
a constant intercourse with the ministry, the 
Churches, and the laity. He was not only a pas- 
tor, but one highly emotional, a lover and a, pro- 
moter of genuine revivals. He was not conspicu- 
ously identified with the burning issue at that time 
— the admission of women into the General Con- 
ference — although when his name was called he 
voted not to admit the delegates, but to submit the 
question of constitutionality to the Church. His 
bearing on the Committee on Itinerancy made him 
many friends. There and elsewhere, whenever any 
one named for the Episcopacy was mentioned in 
his presence, or his opinion of any one nominated 
was asked, in every case he mentioned the quali- 
fications of such persons without one disparaging 
word or look. The sum of his career abundantly 
justifies his election." 

After the election it developed that some dele- 
gates had adopted a unique method of arriving at 
one qualification for the Episcopacy of men whose 
election was being advocated. They called on 
Dr. Joyce and asked his opinion of one or two 
men who were being prominently mentioned. Dr. 
Joyce spoke highly of them. The delegates then 
went to the other men and asked them their opinion 
of Dr. Joyce as an Episcopal possibility. These 
brethren spoke disparagingly of the Doctor, de- 
claring it would never do to elect him. The out- 
come was that these men lost the votes of this 



84 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce, 



group of delegates, while they were all given to 
Dr. Joyce. 

The Independent, one of the leading religious 
journals of America, speaking of the election of 
bishops from a non-Methodist standpoint, said: 

"In the election of Bishops Vincent, Fitz- 
Gerald, Joyce, and Goodsell the Conference struck 
a high plane of ability and character. Bishop 
Vincent excels as preacher, educator, organizer; 
Bishop FitzGerald in administrative and judicial 
ability; Bishop Joyce in balance of powers; Bishop 
Goodsell in strength and grace of mind and char- 
acter." 

The election of Dr. Joyce to the Episcopacy 
was favorably received by the Church at large. 
It provoked the greatest enthusiasm in Cincinnati, 
Greencastle, and Lafayette, where he had held long 
pastorates. 

A movement was immediately set on foot by 
Cincinnati Methodists to secure his residence in 
Cincinnati, which had long been one of the cities 
designated by the General Conference as an Epis- 
copal residence. As this was not in harmony with 
the method then in vogue, which gave the bishops 
their choice of residence in the order of their 
seniority of election, the plan to bring Bishop 
Joyce to Cincinnati was not carried out. He was 
assigned to Chattanooga, Tennessee, instead. The 



Elected Bishop. 



85 



following is the report of the efforts of the friends 
of Bishop Joyce to secure his residence in Cincin- 
nati, as set forth in one of the papers there: 

"The following memorial to the Board of 
Bishops, asking that Cincinnati be made the Epis- 
copal residence of Bishop I. W. Joyce, has been 
signed by several hundred prominent laymen of 
the Methodist Churches of this city and duly for- 
warded : 

" 'To the Board of Bishops of the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church: 

" 'Reverend and Beloved Fathers, — During 
the period of his pastorship in this city — consisting 
of nearly eight years — Rev. Isaac W. Joyce, D. D., 
has shown an executive capacity and magnetic 
force which enabled him to awaken widespread re- 
ligious interest in the community, and conduct in 
worship crowded assemblies; to secure increased 
congregations and membership in the Churches to 
which he was appointed; to interest men, women, 
and children in personal religion and train them 
for Church work; to supervise and direct wisely 
the secular affairs of his charges, and to stimulate 
his people to greater liberality toward all our con- 
nectional objects. 

" 'He early won and has held the respect, affec- 
tion, and confidence of Cincinnati Methodists. He 
is to-day the recognized wise and judicious leader 
of the Protestant ministers and laymen of our city 
in all concerted plans and efforts to secure pubUc 
reforms — such as Sabbath observance, enforcement 



86 Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 

^iiii 

of law and order^ and other good works. Our best 
citizens of all classes— Church-goers and non- 
Church-goers- — hold him in high esteem. 

" ^Permit, therefore, the undersigned to express 
the hope and wish that, if it shall create no em- 
barrassment in making your selections. Bishop I. 
W. Joyce be allowed to select Cincinnati for his 
home.' 

"Another paper, having the same object in view, 
has also been forwarded to the Board of Bishops, 
supported by resolutions passed by the Official 
Boards of nineteen Methodist Churches in Cincin- 
nati and vicinity." 



CHAPTER IX. 



His Episcopal, Residences: Chattanooga and 
Minneapolis. 

CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE, was the 
first episcopal residence of Bishop Joyce. 
At the time of his election the bishops in 
the order of seniority chose their places of resi- 
dence from the cities designated by the General 
Conference as episcopal residences. Since then 
the plan of assigning the bishops to their resi- 
dences by the General Conference itself has been 
introduced. 

Bishop and Mrs. Joyce removed at once to 
Chattanooga, and for eight years that city was 
their home. Their son, Frank, during Dr. Joyce's 
stay in Cincinnati, had married Miss Jessie Birch, 
daughter of Hon. Jesse Birch, of Bloomington, 
Illinois, and Cincinnati became their home for 
some years. Later the two families were to be 
delightfully reunited at Minneapolis. 

Bishop Joyce threw himself with his customary 
energy into the work of the Church in the South. 
While his presidency of Conferences, in harmony 
with our plan of General Superintendency, took 

87 



88 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



him all over the country and into foreign lands, 
yet he was able to keep in close touch with the local 
work in Chattanooga, and with the work through- 
out the Central South. 

The First Methodist Episcopal Church, of 
Chattanooga, was not then the great Church it is 
to-day. At the time the bishop went to the city 
the Church was in a discouraged condition. The 
salary was but twelve hundred dollars a year, and 
the influence exerted by the Church in the com- 
munity was not large. Bishop and Mrs. Joyce 
put their energies into the work of this Church. 
Mrs. Joyce accepted the presidency of its Woman's 
Foreign Missionary Society. Bishop Joyce at- 
tended the Official Board meetings whenever pos- 
sible, and counseled with the brethren. New hope 
and courage were infused into the Church's work. 
A leading layman of this Church says that the 
splendid growth achieved by this Church since has 
been due in no small degree to the counsel and en- 
couragement of Bishop Joyce. 

Throughout the city also he made his influ- 
ence felt. He preached in every Protestant church 
in the city ; in some of them repeatedly. He iden- 
tified himself with the city's life. Again and again 
he was the orator of the local posts of the Grand 
Army of the Republic at their Decoration-day 
services. Mrs, Joyce organized the Kindergarten 



His Episcopal Residences. 



89 



Association of Chattanooga, and came into pleas- 
ant social contact with the ladies of the city. 

Bishop Joyce looked carefully also into the 
condition of the town and country Churches. Into 
every remote part of the Holston Conference he 
found his way, going where no bishop had ever 
before found his way, according to the statement 
of laymen on the ground. He was a true '^epis- 
copos'' — overseer. Rev. J. J. Manker, D. D., 
a prominent member of the Holston Conference, 
writes : 

"During his stay at Chattanooga he took upon 
himself, perhaps more than any other bishop has 
ever done, the cares and burdens of the pastors and 
Churches, lavishing his own means in efforts to 
help where help was sorely needed and could be 
given in no other way. He never made any dis- 
play of his charities, and probably no one ever 
knew how he denied himself in order to render 
assistance to the needy." 

How deeply he became interested in the various 
charges in the region about him may be inferred 
from the following letter, written to a young min- 
ister in a Northern State, as the latter was about 
leaving his first pastorate: 

"Chattanooga, Tenn., March i^, 1889. 

"My Dear : 

"It has been in my heart many days to write 
you. I want a pastor for Anniston, Alabama. 



90 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce, 



We are building a new stone church at a cost 
of sixteen thousand dollars. It will be finished in 
May. The town has twelve thousand people. Very 
many of them are from the North. They are of 
our Churchj and friends of our cause. It is a new 
place for us. Whoever goes there will have to 
organize the Church. We will be able to start with 
seventy-five or one hundred members. The town 
will give five hundred dollars, and I will add to 
that three hundred dollars from the Missionary 
Society, making in all eight hundred dollars for 
the first year. We can pay one thousand dollars 
the second year. This is one of the very best 
fields I know anywhere for a young man who wants 
to do a great work for God and the Church. The 
town will double its population in less than five 
years. Do you know of a young man who is thor- 
oughly devoted and consecrated to the Lord, who 
can preach, will visit, is good in a prayer-meeting ; 
loves Sunday-school work — in short, loves to do the 
work of a Methodist preacher? Do you know of 
such a young man — not one who you think would 
do, but one who you Jcnow would do? It has been 
the prayer of my very inmost thought and heart 
all day to-day that it may be the will of the Lord 
to put it into your heart to say to me that you 
will take this field and cultivate it for the blessed 
Christ. If such should be the case, I would be the 
happiest man in this whole Southland. 

^^Now, my dear boy, let me hear from you at 
the earliest possible moment, for I must settle this 
matter within the next ten days. God bless you! 

"Faithfully your friend, 

"Isaac W. Joyce." 



His Episcopal Residences, 



91 



This little incident, unimportant in itself, shows 
how Bishop Joyce took all the Churches on his 
heart. He identifies himself with their interests — 
says "we can pay" so much this year and so much 
next. It is this absolute pouring out of himself 
in behalf of every part of his field that accounts 
for the magnitude of his achievements, and for the 
breaking down of his magnificent physique years 
before a reasonable time. 

In the discharge of the duties of his ofiice on 
one occasion, he accepted the hospitality of a col- 
ored presiding elder at Cleveland, Tennessee. This 
aroused the prejudices of some people, and he 
was bitterly assailed in the public press. He 
made no reply to these attacks, although they 
wounded his sensitive and tender heart to the very 
quick. Instead, he went steadily forward in the 
discharge of his duties, and the persecution soon 
spent itself. While the feeling was most bitter 
he was invited to preach at First Church in 
Chattanooga, and a magnificent audience turned 
out to hear him, composed of the leading citizens 
of Chattanooga of all Churches. Coming when 
and as it did, this was a great comfort to Bishop 
Joyce, evidencing thus openly the high esteem in 
which he was held in the city that had been his 
home for five years. 

In addition to all his other labors, Bishop Joyce 



92 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



assumed, at the earnest and insistent request of 
the trustees, the Chancellorship of the U. S. Grant 
University. He consented to take this office only 
because it was a critical time in the institution's 
history, arising out of causes which led also to 
the consolidation of our two Methodist colleges 
in the Holston Conference, located at Chattanooga 
and Athens respectively. Bishop Joyce received 
no salary. The services he rendered in this im- 
portant position are declared to have been of in- 
estimable value to the Church. And in this work 
Mr. John A. Patten, a prominent layman of the 
Holston Conference, says, "He showed the qualities 
of a statesman." 

At the close of the General Conference of 1896 
Bishop Joyce transferred his residence to Minne- 
apolis, Minnesota. Owing to the fact that his, 
son. Colonel Frank M. Joyce, had recently rem^oved 
to that city, tliis change of residence was especially 
gratifying to Bishop and Mrs. Joyce. Minne- 
apolis continued to be their home for over nine 
years, until Bishop Joyce was called to his heav- 
enly home. 

Almost immediately after taking up his resi- 
dence in Minneapolis (June, 1896), Bishop and 
Mrs. Joyce left for the Orient, where the bishop 
supervised for two years our Conferences in Japan, 
Korea, and China. This foreign work is described 
in another chapter. 



His Episcopal Residences. 



93 



Before leaving for the Orient, Bishop Joyce 
preached at the Hennepin Avenue Church in Min- 
neapohs. Reference to the occasion is made by 
one of the local dailies as follows : 

"Bishop Joyce, who is to relieve Bishop Fowler 
as the head of the Methodist Episcopal Church 
in the Northwest, preached his first sermon to a 
Minnesota congregation at Hennepin Avenue 
Methodist Episcopal Church yesterday morning. 
It was a living sermon, full of hope and faith in 
the glorious possibilities of human nature, and 
seemed born of the June sunshine and beautiful 
flowers that filled the church. 

"Bishop Joyce is first of all a preacher. He 
has a kindly face, a devout enthusiasm, and that 
rarest of gifts, personal magnetism. There was 
vitality, earnestness, and cheerfulness in all he said, 
and his impassioned appeal for a deeper under- 
standing of the 'things which are not seen,' stirred 
his hearers profoundly. Bishop Joyce's voice is 
eloquent even in his colloquial speech, and in the 
higher flights of pure oratory it was greatly ef- 
fective. 

"The bishop took for his text 2 Cor. iv, 18, 
'While we look not at the things which are seen, 
but at the things which are not seen. For the 
things which are seen are temporal, but the things 
which are not seen are eternal.' 

"He said in part: 'This world, which is but an 
aggregation of material things, is of less impor- 
tance than it seems to be. We want to feel that the 
foundations under us are immovable, and we reach 



94 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



out to touch that wliich is not possible. The mental 
is greater than the material, and the spiritual can 
not be satisfied with that which is merely for the 
passing moment. No thoughtful man regards the 
pleasures that come out of material things as his 
greatest blessings. It is a world of beauty, and 
life and light, that sometimes makes us feel that 
it is the only world. And when I reflect that the 
majority of the people in it go to bed hungry, 
and that the morrow can bring them nothing but 
the hope of going forth to battle for existence, I 
do not wonder that men learn to think beyond the 
hour. We come into this great world and push 
and fight and crowd. Then there is darkness and 
we pass out, and if that were all I would rather 
now break through the crust of things into the 
dust of oblivion.' 

"The bishop then spoke earnestly of a better 
world, and mentioned with the deepest satisfaction 
that scientific men were to-day finding the truths 
of the Bible not inconsistent with the laws of the 
universe; that 'men of the highest scholarsiiip are 
beginning to find that there is another life just 
next door to this material life; that justice says, 
unless there is another life this life is a mockery, 
and infinite wisdom is toying with the minds and 
hearts of men. Christ has said there is another 
world. God has said it, and, Father divine, I thank 
Thee for the declaration.' 

"Continuing, the bishop said men could not 
hope to come to an understanding with their Heav- 
enly Father in this world. In that better life alone 
would it be possible for them to achieve His great- 



His Episcopal Residences, 



95 



est development, and realize all His grand possi- 
bilities. The Father, too, would then have a better 
chance to show the efficacy of His grace. 

" 'When the sun goes down to-day it will set 
upon a better world than it looked upon this morn- 
ing. This is the best world since our first parents 
were in Eden. The Bible is a bigger book to-day 
than ever, and this material universe is richer than 
our fathers ever dreamed. In 1896, Jesus Christ 
is a larger Christ than He was 1800 years ago.' 

"At the close of his sermon. Bishop Joyce ad- 
dressed his congregation on a personal matter. "^I 
am very sorry I can not move here for some time,' 
he said ; 'duty calls me to Korea, Japan, and China, 
and I leave here Wednesday morning. My plans 
are to be absent two years, but I hope to be with 
you in March or April, 1898. I never shirk my 
duty, and I go to those distant lands with the same 
faith that I would visit your Churches here. Re- 
member me in your family prayers, and I will pray 
for you.' " 

Bishop and Mrs. Joyce returned from the 
Orient in April, 1898, and immediately proceeded 
to Minneapolis. They were given receptions by 
the Churches of both Minneapolis and St. Paul. 
The St. Paul Pioneer-Press gives the following de- 
scription of the reception at the latter city, in 
which the governor took part: 

''Such a welcome as Bishop Isaac W. Joyce 
received last evening in the Central Park Church 
from the members of the Methodist congregations 



96 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



of St. Paul will live long in his memory. The 
bishop only recently took up his residence in Minne- 
apolis, and the reception last evening was taken 
as an opportunity for the clergy and the laymen 
to meet him and Mrs. Joyce. 

"Every Methodist Church in the city was rep- 
resented in the audience which faced the bishop and 
those on the pulpit platform with him. Governor 
and Mrs. Lind were there, and so were Rev. 
Benjamin Longley, pastor of Central Park; Dr. 
Bridgman, president of Hamline University ; Judge 
Brill and Dr. F. M. Rule, presiding elder of the 
St. Paul District. Dr. Rule was the chairman of 
the meeting. Beautiful flowers and potted plants 
were placed in profusion about the platform. 

"Addresses of welcome were delivered to the 
bishop and to his wife. Mrs. Longley addressed 
the greeting of the women to Mrs. Joyce, and she 
responded feelingly. Dr. Bridgman spoke on be- 
half of the ministers, and Judge Brill on behalf 
of the laity. 

" 'Our Church has been very fortunate,' said 
Judge Brill, 'in its selections of men for the high 
office of bishop. A Methodist bishop is no ordi- 
nary bishop. He is the head of one of the greatest 
religious organizations upon the globe. Unlike 
any other potentate, civil or ecclesiastical, he 
is not confined to any State, or continent, or nation. 
His diocese is the world. We are to be congratu- 
lated to-night that we have as guest one of these 
Methodist bishops, and that he has come to live 
among us and be our neighbor and friend, and we 
are to felicitate ourselves that he is a bishop who 



His Episcopal Residences, 



97 



so nearly iSUs the Pauline ideal — ^that he is so 
spiritually minded, so zealous in good works, so 
abundant in labors, and is so in touch with the 
life of the plain people. The people of this Pauline 
city bid this Pauline bishop welcome. 

" ^We need his ripe experience, his wise counsel, 
and the stirring influence of his spiritual force. 
The people of New York and other communities 
are wont to think that about everything worth 
while resides with them, and that we provincials 
are narrow and uncultured. Perhaps in our battle 
with the elements of nature, which we have had 
to subdue in this new country, we of the West have 
given too little attention to the block of our hats 
or the cut of our coats. However this may be, we 
can assure Bishop Joyce and Mrs. Joyce that we 
have warm hearts, and into the innermost recesses 
of our aff^ections we to-night bid them enter. Our 
hearts, our homes, and our extremest means lie all 
unlocked to their occasions.' 

"Governor Lind, so the chairman stated in his 
presentation remarks, had been asked to represent 
'all creation' by his presence at the reception. The 
governor said his mother was a Methodist, and 
therefore Methodism meant much to him. 'It is 
one of the Churches of the world,' said he, 'that 
has never felt the blight of being a State Church.' 
Then he told how important a factor the Methodist 
Church is in religion, and in education, 'and — yes, 
in politics,' he added. Pie concluded by extending 
a hearty welcome to the bishop and his wife. 

"When the bishop commenced to speak his 
voice was soft and low, but pretty soon he 'got 
7 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



warmed up,' as he himself expressed it, and talked 
in the old-fashioned Methodist way. His auditors 
were delighted, for Bishop Joyce is one of the 
most entertaining of pulpit orators. He told of 
the work of the bishops, and he confided to his lis- 
teners that he would like nothing better than an 
opportunity to discontinue for a period his regular 
duties and make a tour of the State and go into 
the homes of the laymen. He desired to come into 
contact with the laity. He was glad that he had 
been brought into Minnesota 'to help a little in 
the building up of righteousness in the North- 
west.' 

"The bishop returned to this country from 
China last April after a tour of the world. He 
has therefore traveled much. He is a keen student 
of human nature. He spoke in the Norwegian and 
Swedish tongues toward the close of his remarks, 
and alluded to the purpose of the Methodist Church 
to raise twenty million dollars as a twentieth-cen- 
tury thank-offering to carry on the work of the 
Church. He urged all to help, especially in the 
work of securing two million converts while the 
great fund is being raised." 

In Minneapolis and throughout the Northwest 
Bishop Joyce threw himself into the work just as 
he had done in the South. Dedicating churches by 
the score, preaching on special occasions, speaking 
at camp-meetings, conventions, and Conferences, 
besides all the regular work in presiding at the 
Annual Conferences filled his days and nights with 



His Episcopal Residences, 



99 



toil. The Northwestern Christian Advocate says 
of him: 

"The same spirit of helpfulness which he dis- 
played toward his members when a pastor he dis- 
played toward Churches after he became a bishop. 
During his residence in Minneapolis he devoted 
himself to the work of the Church, particularly to 
that part of the Church needing him most. From 
deliberate conviction he gave himself to the weaker 
Churches, and it is a matter of record that he 
preached and lectured, frequently paying his own 
expenses and always without compensation, at 
ninety-two places in the Northwest which had never 
before been visited by a bishop of our communion." 

From a personal letter from Dr. Fayette L. 
Thompson, pastor of Hennepin Avenue Church, 
Minneapolis, printed in the Central Christian Ad- 
vocate of January 25, 1905, we quote: 

"I wrote in a recent issue of the Central a 
quotation from my calendar relative to the love 
and esteem in which Bishop Joyce and his family 
are held by Hennepin Avenue Church. I am glad 
you used that, yet had I known you were to do 
so, I would have made it much stronger. I most 
confidently believe that Bishop Joyce and his fam- 
ily come as near to the actual New Testament of 
what a bishop in the Church of God should be 
as it is possible for flesh and blood. When in the 
city the Bishop is always at prayer-meeting, mod- 
est, retiring, requesrting to be permitted to sit with 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



the worshipers and to be given no more attention 
than though he were a layman. On a number 
of occasions, when unusually pressed with work, he 
has called up the pastor over the telephone early 
Thursday evening to say that he had expected to 
be at the service, but he did not see how he could 
come that evening, but that liis heart and prayers 
were with us in our devotions. In these days, 
when it is rumored that some bishops and even some 
presiding elders are so great in the offices they hold 
as to be excused from the usual personal loyalties 
to the local Church expected from influential peo- 
ple, it is indeed a delight to have in one's congre- 
gation such people as this saintly bishop and his 
family. If there is a solitary thing in which he 
can help any pastor in the city that he is not doing, 
I am frank to say that I do not know it. He is a 
blessing and inspiration to all of us, and withal 
as genial and modest as a child. Someway it seems 
to me if the Church could appreciate its saints 
while they are still with us more than we do, it 
would be well— well for them, well for us.'' 

In 1902 Bishop Joyce was assigned to visit 
our Conferences in South America, and late that 
autumn he and Mrs. Joyce sailed for that country. 
The description of his work there is given in the 
chapter on "Foreign Missions." On their return 
to this country a reception on a large scale was 
planned for them by Minneapolis Methodists. The 
following account of it is from the Minneapolis 
Times: 



His Episcopal Residences, 



101 



"The deep respect and genuine affection the 
Methodists of the city feel for Bishop Isaac W. 
Joyce and his wife were manifested last evening 
in a reception in Wesley Church, sucii as is rarely 
accorded any one on their home coming. 

"Those present were not wholly confined to 
Methodism, but all denominations joined in giving 
welcome to the man and woman who have devoted 
their lives to the good of mankind. 

"Wesley Church has rarely presented a more 
beautiful appearance, nor held a more notable 
array of speakers, for nation. State, and Church 
were represented. In his address Bishop Joyce 
said that no one quite realized the beauties of the 
American flag until one had spent some time in 
foreign lands, and it seemed in special keeping with 
his expressed love for his country's emblem that 
innumerable flags were used to decorate the church. 

"The entire balcony and Sunday-school was 
draped with flags, and the supporting pillars were 
wound with the national colors. Draping the pul- 
pit rail and organ were the Stars and Stripes, and 
red and white bunting hung over doorways and 
arches. Palms and American Beauty roses added 
to the beautiful effect. 

"Dr. Mark Smith presided, introducing the 
speakers, who were Governor Samuel R. Van Sant, 
Senator Moses E. Clapp, Congressman John Lind, 
Mayor J. C. Haynes, Dr. William Fielder, Dr. 
Robert Forbes, and Dr. James S. Montgomery. 

"Governor Van Sant in a few well chosen words 
honored the bishop as a man, and for his work 
welcomed him back to the great Commonwealth of 
Minnesota. 



102 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



"Senator Clapp spoke in eloquent language of 
the good that was being accomplished by men and 
women like Bishop and Mrs, Joyce, and he be- 
lieved that the world was growing better. 

"Mr. Lind emphasized the fact that in all the 
recent interviews given by Bishop and Mrs. Joyce 
they had always spoken well of the country in 
which they were carrying on their work. They 
had always found something encouraging, some- 
thing hopeful. Mr. Lind added, "We are not 
here to welcome a hero from many battles, but a 
man and wife engaged in good work, and this is 
of infinitely more good to the world than battle- 
scarred heroes.' 

"Mayor Haynes paid a warm tribute to the 
unselfish life, doing good to others, bringing to the 
soul of man comfort, a life that deserved and re- 
ceived the respect of all men. 

"In Bishop Joyce was found the kind of hu- 
man nature that grows younger, the kind that 
never grows old. 

"Dr. Fielder told that a woman recently re- 
turning from India said that no one had left there 
richer memories, holier influences, a more perma- 
nently good impression than had Bishop and Mrs. 
Joyce, and it was the same, Mr. Fielder said, in 
Japan, Korea, South America, and every other 
place in which they had engaged in work. 

"He believed in giving the word of encourage- 
ment, the tribute of flowers from the heart, to the 
living, and not wait until they were dead, and he 
sincerely hoped that when Bishop Joyce left the 
Church militant to join the Church triumphant, 
he might leave from Minneapolis. 



His Episcopal Residences, 



103 



"Dr. Forbes added his quota of praise for 
Bishop Joyce and his wife, and told a number 
of witty anecdotes. 

"Though not on the program, there was so 
insistent a call for Dr. Montgomery that he spoke 
a few words of welcome and appreciation of Bishop 
Joyce's kindly nature. 

"Had there ever been even the slightest doubt 
in Bishop Joyce's mind as to the sincerity of the 
welcome, it must have vanished as he arose to 
respond. 

"Almost instantly every man and woman in 
the audience were on their feet, wildly applauding 
and waving handkerchiefs. It was several minutes 
before the bishop was able to speak. 

"He dwelt principally upon his work in South 
America. It was his honest conviction, he said, 
that the United States had only the good-will of 
those people, and more so now that we had shown 
such interest in the Panama Canal, of which the 
bishop was in hearty favor. It was surprising, he 
said, to note the strong desire everywhere among 
them to learn to speak English. 

"Bishop Joyce and Mrs. Joyce expect to re- 
turn to South America in December, and will re- 
main until the following May, when they will go 
to Los Angeles to attend the General Conference. 

"At the close of the program. Bishop and Mrs. 
Joyce, Governor Van Sant, Senator Clapp, Mr. 
Lind, and Mr. Haynes received the guests, of whom 
there were nearly a thousand." 



CHAPTER X. 



As AN Administrator. 

BISHOP JOYCE was not a man of the ju- 
dicial but of the ardent temperament. 
Nevertheless, in the highly important ad- 
ministrative work involved in the functions of a 
bishop he proved himself a wise superintendent. 
The fervor of his nature was balanced by a sturdy 
common sense, which extraordinarily intimate con- 
tact with men re-enforced. So that as a judge of 
human nature he had a penetration rare to a man 
of his temperament. Added to this was an extreme 
conscientiousness — a positive passion to do the best 
possible for the men and Churches committed to 
his charge. These two qualities, combined with a 
thorough knowledge of the practical workings of 
Methodist economy, made him one of the most ef- 
ficient administrators of recent years among Meth- 
odist bishops. Some of our general superintend- 
ents have been men so long out of the ranks of 
the pastorate and presiding eldership, or so short 
a time in it at all, as that they were not conversant 
with the practical problems of the itinerant system, 

104 



As an Administrator. 



105 



but dealt with them from a doctrinaire vie\rpoint, 
to the hurt of the cause. The fact that Bishop 
Joyce had been for thirty years in the active ranks 
of the ministry was greatly in his favor in the ad- 
ministrative work of the Episcopacy. 

Bishop Joyce might appropriately be styled 
"The Pastor's Bishop.'' His sympathies were 
strongly with the ministers. He invited their con- 
fidence. He was in the habit of asking them, from 
the least to the greatest, to come and lay their 
matters before him. While he could not always 
do for them what they desired, yet he treated them 
as brothers. At the Conference at The Dalles, 
Oregon, in 1895, for instance, he said: "Brethren, 
I have never yet felt that I was a bishop. I feel 
like one of the brethren. I am here to help you." 
At another Conference he said: "When I was made 
a bishop I made a vow that I would be a brother 
to every Methodist preacher around the world." 
And the Methodist preachers everywhere declare 
that he was. 

When it occurred, as it must in the very nature 
of the case, that men had to be sent to hard fields 
and to disappointments, criticism was largely dis- 
armed by the evident grief it caused him. 

Presiding elders who have sat in his cabinets 
testify to his solicitude for the preachers and the 
preachers' wives. The hearts in the parsonage. 



106 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce, 



and especially in the little parsonage^ were the con- 
stant objects of his thought and care. Yet he 
was accustomed to appeal to their loyalty and hero- 
ism by saying: "The preacher who gets a poor 
appointment must remember that Jesus had not 
where to lay His head." 

Bishop Joyce himself had been a pastor for 
thirty years, the earlier part of that time in the 
very humblest circuits. If, as George Matheson 
says, "All sympathy is memory," he had a very 
discernible basis for his sympathy with poor 
preachers. He knew their sorrows and burdens, 
the injustices under which they often suffered, the 
trivial faults and blunders which would so often 
result in the request for their removal from a 
charge. Hence he was ever ready to hear the 
preacher's side of the case. Especially was the 
bishop ready to champion his cause if he found 
that the preacher was being removed to gratify 
one or two worldly ofBcials in the Church. Even 
though the aforesaid ofBcials had been able to se- 
cure an adverse vote in the last Quarterly Confer- 
ence of the year, that gauntlet which every Meth- 
odist preacher has to run each year, the preacher 
would go back. 

Nor did the Churches themselves suffer under 
this course. We have watched the results in many 
Conferences, and have heard very little adverse 



As an Administrator. 



107 



criticism. Bishop Joyce went on the theory that 
it was good for the Churches themselves to treat 
their preachers with consideration and respect. 
And the results justified his course. 

Committees of laymen were always received 
with kindness and given a fair hearing. Yet a 
course was pursued which was calculated to make 
Churches careful about whom they appointed to 
represent their interests. He was accustomed to 
ask Church committees two or three questions which 
sometimes proved embarrassing. Such as : "Do you 
attend regularly the services of the Church, includ- 
ing prayer-meeting ? Do you have family prayers ? 
Do you stand by the preacher in his revival work? 
Do you take the Church paper?" If the com- 
mittee could not answer these questions with some 
degree of satisfaction, the bishop would decline 
to hear them, telling them kindly but firmly that 
they were not proper persons to be intrusted with 
the selection of a pastor. This did not mean that 
the Church would go unrepresented, for the presid- 
ing elders rarely failed to do the most ample jus- 
tice to the Church's desires. Often, of course, com- 
mittees could answer his questions in the affirm- 
ative, in which case the bishop heard them fully. 
He frequently had prayer with these lay com- 
mittees before separating. At a Conference in the 
Central West a committee representing a strong 



108 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce, 



Church called on the bishop to make certain repre- 
sentations concerning a new pastor. At their head 
was a prominent physician. A conversation sub- 
stantially as follows ensued after the committee 
had been introduced, the bishop asking: "You are 
Dr. Blank?" "Yes, sir." "Does this newspaper 
paragraph refer to you?" At the same time hand- 
ing the physician a clipping which told how the 
doctor had won a progressive euchre prize a few 
nights before. The physician's face flushed, and 
he acknowledged that he was the man referred to; 
also that he did not have time to attend either the 
prayer-meeting or revival services. The bishop 
courteously but decidedly declined to hear the 
doctor as to a new minister. As a matter of fact 
the Church got the minister they were after, but 
it was not through the committee, but through the 
regular authority, the presiding elder. A pleas- 
ing aftermath of this incident is that the physician 
has never since been known to touch a card. 

At a Conference in the Far West a Church was 
asking for the removal of its pastor. Inasmuch 
as the preacher's revival and benevolence report 
was exceptionally fine the bishop inquired espe- 
cially as to the action of the Church. He learned 
that the fourth Quarterly Conference had taken 
action against the preacher because of the influ- 
ence of the most wealthy layman in the Church, 



As an Administrator. 



109 



who had been offended by some public utterance 
of the preacher on civic matters. Bishop Joyce 
sent for the layman, and a conversation substan- 
tially as follows occurred: 

"You desire a change of pastors?" 
"Yes, sir." 

"Is not your present pastor a man of good 
character?" 

"O yes, Bishop, he is an excellent man." 
"Doesn't he preach well?" 

"Yes, there is no complaint about his preach- 
ing abilities." 

"He has had a good revival this year, has n't 
he.?" 

"Yes, he has taken in quite a number of 
people." 

"How about his benevolent collections ? are n't 
they well up?" 

"Yes, I understand they are. But you see. 
Bishop, he has offended some of our people by 
indiscreet utterances. And the Official Board 
thinks, for the sake of harmony and the good of 
the Church, we ought to have a change." 

"Do you know anything about the club-House 
in the suburbs of your city?" 

The layman stirred uneasily. 

"Why, yes, there is such a club-house." 

"There is a great deal of gambhng there, is 
there not?" 

"Well, there is some card-playing there, with 
perhaps an occasional bet." 



110 Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



"Yon own some stock in the club-house, do n't 
you?" 

"I own some little stock along with business 
men generally in that city." 

"Do you not own the majority of the stock?" 

"I said I own some of the stock." 

"Won't you please be explicit, and tell me 
whether you do or do not own four-sevenths of the 
stock in this club-house?" 

The lajaiian acknowledged that he did. 

Bishop Jo^'ce went on: "My brother, do you 
think that a man who owns the majority of the 
stock in an institution that carries on gambling as 
a part of its equipment is the proper person to 
dictate the appointment and removal of pastors 
in the Church of God? Your minister is going 
back. And I advise you to either change your 
mode of life, or in all honesty withdraw from the 
Church which your course is dishonoring." 

Of course the wealthy layman went away 
angry. But no sober-minded man will doubt that 
a like course of procedure on the part of the 
appointing powers would save some ministers from 
crucifixion at the hands of godless la}^ officials, 
would give other ministers courage to deal with 
cases of outbreaking evil, and would by these 
means furnish the whole Church a moral tonic 
and the world a token of sincerity on the part of 
the Church which are very much needed. 

Bishop Joyce himself told this incident: 



As an Administrator, 



111 



"Once there came into my room at a certain 
Conference, for private interview, four very in- 
fluential looking Church officials, desiring a change 
of pastor, because, somehow, they hardly knew 
why, their present pastor, there but one year, had 
failed to have success. To each of my questions 
as to his scholarship, preaching, ability, piety, 
pastoral fidelity, social qualities, and personal ap- 
pearance, they said, 'He is number one.' 'Well,' 
said I, 'brethren, there is another side; let us in- 
quire into it.' And upon interrogation I found 
that not one of them ever read a Church paper 
or had family worship or attended class or 
prayer meetings, or Sunday-school, and but seldom 
even the regular Sunday services. And yet 
scarcely ever missed any club or lodge or social 
function. 'Well, well,' said I, 'brethren, having 
heard your confession, I must say I am not sur- 
prised that he has had no success ; for with such 
a strong four-horse team pulling back hard with 
the world, I could not succeed; neither could a 
Wesley or a Paul; and even Christ Himself, as 
your pastor, would in a measure fail to hold con- 
verts and draw sinners. Let us all get down here, 
alone with God, and pray over this matter.' And 
the Lord seemed to mightily help me as I held 
that persecuted pastor and these unfaithful offi- 
cials before the throne. Soon they sobbed and 
cried to God for mercy. And, as we rose, bathed 
in tears, they said, 'Dear Bishop, we will take back 
all we said about a change of pastor, and will 
earnestly seek for ourselves and others a change 
of heart, and do all we can during the coming year 



112 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



to hold up, encourage, and help our pastor to suc- 
ceed.' Well, blessed be the Lord, soon a wonder- 
ful revival came down on that charge, and as a 
natural consequence a unanimous, most earnest pe- 
tition went up to the next Conference for the re- 
turn of their much-beloved pastor. Thousands of 
charges are in the same condition. Let none but 
the sinless hereafter cast stones at pastors. And 
go, all ye unfaithful, and seek first a change of 
heart, and pastoral success and all other blessings 
shall be yours.'' 

That Bishop Joyce made some mistakes is only 
saying that he was human. Every earnest man 
makes some mistakes. But he did not make the 
most fatal of mistakes — thut of being dilettante 
and half-hearted. He administered for the glory 
of God, as he understood it. Believing profoundly 
in the need of spiritual men and in the danger of 
worldly men dictating policies, either in pulpit or 
pew, he administered with all his might to secure 
the leadership of good men everywhere. Abso- 
lutely sincere himself, it is not to be wondered 
at that he was sometimes deceived by men who 
affected a spirituality they did not possess, and 
thereby sometimes blundered. These mistakes he 
was always ready to acknowledge when he came 
to see them, and so far as possible to rectify. 

Bishop Joyce was a conservative in theology. 
He shared the limitations of those who have not 



As an Administrator. 



113 



had the benefit of the wider educational outlook. 
This occasionally prevented his doing full justice 
to a man of opposite views. 

But such mistakes were rare. The natural 
catholicity of the man, his breadth of sympathy, 
his strong common sense, and his constant looking 
to God for guidance, together combined to give 
a wisdom and fairness to his administration which, 
all things considered, was extraordinary. We had 
Bishop Joyce in our home during a Conference 
session in Michigan. There was not a night that 
he was not working at the administrative problems 
of that Conference until after midnight. He took 
exquisite pains to get all the facts and to give 
the fullest consideration to all the interests in- 
volved. Our wonder at the time was that he did 
not break down under the strain. 

Dr. William McK. Darwood, of the New York 
Conference, writes: 

"As an administrator he was conscientious to 
a degree that caused him acutest pain. In the city 
of Newburg at his request I sat up with him all 
the last night of the Conference, during which 
time he was in such agony of soul that twice he 
cried out as the tears ran down his face: would 
gladly die to-night if I could adjust these ap- 
pointments so as to satisfy the preachers and the 
Churches they represent.' His heart was as tender 
as that of a woman, and every preacher's troubles 
8 



114 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



were carefully considered. While those that did 
not know him took his devotion to duty for stub- 
bornness, those who knew him best knew that it 
was loyalty to God and His Church. His defense 
for all he did was the Lord Jesus Christ and the 
New Testament." 

Those deeply err who think that it was only 
men of emotional temperament or conservatives in 
theology that the bishop drew to him. He won 
men of the most advanced theology and of the 
most unimpassioned temper. The following letter 
written in 1904, from one of the most intellectual 
preachers and advanced thinkers in the Methodism 
of the Central West is simply a sample of many: 

"My Dear Bishop Joyce: 

"At no time during the past fifteen years have 
I so enjoyed a Conference presidency as I did 
yours last fall. It was a benediction to me and 
to others. The spirit of it throughout was such 
as to bind you close to me. I feel as if I knew 
you now. I am sorry that I have not written tliis 
earlier, for I have felt it in my heart and said it 
to my friends a score of times. God bless you! 
If ever you can make it to spend a day or more 
with us here, or wherever else I may be, kindly 
do so. It will be much to me, I know." 

The gifted writer of this letter stood then and 
still stands in the leading pulpit of his Confer- 
ence, and without having received in any way 



As an Administrator. 



115 



favors from Bishop Joyce. The letter quoted was 
simply the result of the strong spiritual impres- 
sion made by Bishop Joyce's utterances and ad- 
ministration upon him. 

The California Christian Advocate said edi- 
torially concerning his presidency at the Southern 
California Conference in 1902: 

"In matters of administration he carries with 
him, not only the approval of all but the admiration 
of all. His path of duty was sometimes steep 
and not always clear, but with unwavering patience 
he worked over his problems and reached conclu- 
sions into which were woven the threads of his 
personal thinking, and upon which were stamped 
the marks of his prayerful sympathy. There were 
some hard things, as there nearly always are, to 
be done, but it is simple justice to say that Bishop 
Joyce, by his kindly spirit, accomplished his work 
with the minimum of friction. In saying good- 
bye to him, we voice the feeling of all the Confer- 
ences in assuring him, not only that he has done 
us great good, but that he bears with him our 
highest esteem and our prayerful gratitude for 
his devoted service to our common Methodism." 



CHAPTER XI. 



As A Preacher. 

ISHOP JOYCE was first of all a preacher. 
His presence was commanding. A mas- 
sive head, on massive shoulders, with a 
strong symmetrical form to match, arrested the 
attention of an audience at once. While he was 
but five feet nine inches in height, he appeared 
to be all of six feet. His face was open, forehead 
high, eyes large and wide apart, and mouth ex- 
pressive. The features were regular, and consti- 
tuted a handsome countenance. "He looks every 
inch a bishop," was a remark frequently heard. 

To this was added an easy, graceful delivery, 
and a marvelously flexible, sympathetic voice. 
Every shade of human feeling was within the easy 
compass of his voice. It could be tender, soft, 
melodious, like a mother singing a lullaby to her 
child; or it could ring like a trumpet calling men 
to battle, or thunder like a sea in storm. 

Bishop Joyce possessed to an extraordinary de- 
gree the quality we call personal magnetism. It 
is a quality inseparable from, if it does not consist 

116 




As a Preacher, 



117 



in, warmth of heart and breadth of sympathy. 
This warmth of heart glowed in his face, and 
vibrated in his voice, and informed his unconscious 
attitudes with extraordinary winsomeness. In this 
he resembled George Whitefield. Doubtless it was 
this, too, that made it impossible that his printed 
words should convey anything like the impression 
which they exerted when spoken. 

"It was impossible to report him correctly, 
for often one word, with a significant gesture or 
peculiar inflection of voice, told more than a para- 
graph. . . . He was never at his best until helped 
to forget the staid requirements of stilted cere- 
mony. How his Pegasus lagged until spurred by 
some sympathetic ^Amen!' Quickly the eye 
flashed, and the soul leaped. When a whole Con- 
ference of ^Amens' were shouting about him, it 
was like the beating of the storm to the petrel. 
He arose to loftier heights, and his soul was at 
home. . . . He let go the restraint upon himself 
and let loose the characteristic qualities of his 
own nature. He was himself, and it was that 
frank exposure of his own mind and heart that 
put his hearers en rapport with him. When he 
ever feared to do this in the presence of any com- 
pany he had a ^hard time' — and so had others. 
His friends knew that if they wanted the best 
they must clear away the frosts and give summer- 
time to his soul, and then they might expect to 
hear the singing birds he could unloose."^ 



*Dr. C. B. MitcheUln the Methodist Review. 



118 Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



As might be expected from the qualities just 
delineatedj the dominant element was not argu- 
mentative, nor didactic, but hortatory and experi- 
mental. During his pastorates Dr. Joyce's preach- 
ing covered a wider range of subjects than after 
his election as bishop. In the Episcopacy he felt 
called to emphasize evangelism because of its wide 
neglect by the more prominent ministers of the 
Church. Yet in the pastorate, whether he dis- 
coursed on industrial, patriotic, or evangelical 
themes, he made practical application of his 
themes to existing conditions about him. 

It is not known to general Methodism, as it 
is to the Methodists of Indiana, that his style of 
preaching changed very considerably after he 
reached middle age, both as to subject matter 
and delivery. 

His earlier emphasis was the literary emphasis. 
While he had revivals in his charges in Indiana 
and always spoke with enthusiasm, yet his min- 
istry was not especially evangelistic. As a pre- 
siding elder he was more insistent on his preachers 
getting and reading the best books, than he was 
on anything else. And his preaching as we heard 
him at Greencastle was characterized by its lit- 
erary and sympathetic elements rather than by its 
emphasis on religious experience. 

It was not until Dr. Joyce had been in Cin- 



As a Preacher, 



119 



cinnati a year or so, and had received the great 
spiritual baptism elsewhere referred to, that his 
preaching became so pronouncedly evangelistic in 
subject matter, and characterized by such free- 
dom — we may say abandon — and unction of de- 
livery. 

During all the later years of his life Bishop 
Joyce's preaching was marked by the soul-passion 
of the prophet. It was apparent to the most su- 
perficial that he was intensely in earnest, that he 
longed after the souls of his hearers as a father 
yearns for his children. Frequently his speech 
was with tears and choked utterance. Then a 
luminous smile would shine through his tears and 
irradiate his expressive face, until he seemed al- 
most transfigured. 

There are men who have great power over 
audiences without the emotional element which was 
an indissoluble part of Bishop Joyce's force. 
Henry Drummond always spoke quietly, and 
S. D. Gordon does. And no one familiar with 
their work doubts their power over men. But if 
Bishop Joyce attempted to speak quietly and with 
reserve, he was a David in SauPs armor. He had 
to "swing out" and from the fullness of his heart 
pour forth his deepest thoughts and emotions. So 
in his later years he never tried to be anything 
else than himself, and was a master of assemblies. 



120 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



But that which gave peculiar power to Bishop 
Joyce's utterance was the divine unction that so 
generally attended it. As Dr. C. B. Mitchell 
said, in the article above quoted, "a divine unction 
glorified all his other natural and acquired gifts 
of speech, and compelled even ungodly men to 
testify that they had never been so moved by 
preaching. It was this quality which overflowed 
into the heart of his interpreter when addressing 
vast multitudes of foreigners and heathen, and set 
on fire hearts hitherto stolid and unmovable. The 
unction of the sermon was felt, although no word 
was understood. When speaking through a sym- 
pathetic interpreter his soul flashed the lightning, 
and quickly the thunder-clap was heard from the 
lips of the interpreter. Soon all the audience was 
electric, and the Spirit of God made quick en- 
trance into the hearts thus strangely opened." 

At the Conferences presided over by him it 
was the rule that displays of unusual power ac- 
companied his preaching. Unusual, that is, as 
compared with the pulpit discourse of preachers 
in general. Always some persons expressed a pur- 
pose to live a new life, and the preachers and the 
Church members were quickened. Frequently a 
tide of conviction and feeling was aroused that 
would result before midnight in the conversion of a 
score or more souls. At Stroudsburg, Pennsyl- 



As a Preacher. 



121 



vania, at the Philadelphia Conference; at Chicago, 
at the Rock River Conference; at Huntington, at 
the North Indiana Conference, there were upwards 
of one hundred conversions on Conference Sun- 
day, Doubtless there were other Conferences 
where the work was equally great. But of these 
we know. 

Audiences were deeply affected under his 
preaching, many persons weeping, some shouting 
aloud, and others by glowing faces testifying the 
gladness of their hearts. 

The newspapers all over the country unite in 
ascribing remarkable immediate results to his 
preaching. Whether at camp-meetings or Con- 
ferences or Church celebrations the testimony is 
all to the effect that the audiences were deeply 
moved. After making a due deduction for the 
adulatory tone which the newspapers generally 
adopt in commenting on the utterances of notables, 
there remains a large and reliable residuum of 
testimony to Bishop Joyce's power over popular 
assemblies. More frequently than to any other 
orator do they compare him to Bishop Simpson. 

The California Christian Advocate says of his 
addresses at the Southern California Conference 
in 1902: 

"The addresses and sermons of Bishop Joyce 
have been received with the highest satisfaction. 



122 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



The people have been moved to the depths of their 
soul. He has the happy faculty of combining 
his argument with a spirit of glowing evangel- 
ism. Bishop Joyce's sermons take hold upon the 
conscience. He is entirely unconventional. He 
does not preach to please the fancy but to move 
the heart. He is tactful. He defends the Scrip- 
tures against the attacks of radical criticism by 
exalting the Scriptures above criticism. His plea 
for a supernatural gospel, in his address to the 
class for admission, was a masterful answer to the 
superficial rationalism of our day. He has cap- 
tured all hearts.'' 

At the Ohio Conference of 1900, held at Galli- 
polis, some persons who had heard Bishop Simp- 
son forty years before on a like occasion were 
present, and heard Bishop Joyce on Conference 
Sunday, according to a report published in the 
Western Christian Advocate. These declared that 
Bishop Joyce's sermon "was not inferior to that 
great effort in any respect. One of the elderly 
brethren said it was the greatest sermon ever de- 
livered before the Ohio Conference in his time. 
Should the Ohio Conference be held in Galli- 
polis forty years hence, no doubt reference will 
be made to the wonderful sermon of Bishop 
Joyce." 

A San Francisco daily, commenting on the 
sermon before the International Epworth League 



As a Preacher. 



123 



Convention which Bishop Joyce preached in that 
city, says : 

"For two hours Bishop Joyce kept eight thou- 
sand people in their seats, quiet, intent on his 
words. For two hours he moved his hearers at his 
will. He chatted with them, he joked with them, 
he impelled them, he moved them from laughter 
to tears, and from tears to loud ^Amens.' " 

Bishop Berry, speaking of his colleague's 
achievements as a preacher, says: 

"The experience which stands out most promi- 
nently in my memory was the remarkable Sunday 
of the Rock River Conference, at Dixon, some 
eleven or twelve years ago. The bishop was then 
in the zenith of his power. The earlier part of 
the session had been marked by singular spirit- 
uality. The tide rose steadily day by day. When 
Sunday came, expectation was on tiptoe. 

"Bishop Joyce's fame as a preacher and an 
evangelist brought to Dixon a multitude from the 
region round about. At an early hour on Sunday 
morning the church was packed with eager peo- 
ple. I secured a seat in a remote part of the gal- 
lery of the lecture-room, and was glad to get 
that. The love-feast was a love-feast indeed. 
The meeting caught fire with the first song. Then 
song followed testimony and testimony song, while 
waves of emotion sw^ept through the church. 
Bishop Joyce was there, drinking in the tonic of 
the meeting. Perhaps that would not be a good 



124 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



preparation for preaching to some preachers, but 
it set the bishop's brain and soul on fire, and made 
the sermon which followed a possibility. 

"There was only a little space between the 
close of the love-feast and the announcement of 
the text. When the preacher stood up, he faced 
an eager, praying throng. ^Launch out into the 
deep' was the text — a text upon which he so often 
discoursed. I doubt whether in all his ministry 
he ever preached with mightier effect. For a few 
minutes he spoke moderately, as was his wont. 
Then his words came quick and hot. Soon his 
utterance was volcanic. Twice did he reach a cli- 
max I have never heard him equal. In dramatic 
vividness and emotional power they were tremen- 
dous. Preachers and people were swayed as the 
forest is swayed by the storm. We were melted 
and aroused, and the shouts of joy did not seem 
at all out of place. The power of the serm_on was 
best shown in the bishop's exhortation and invi- 
tation. What an invitation to backsliders and un- 
repentant sinners ! How it gripped the conscience 
and forced decision! No one was surprised that 
there were seekers that morning, or that the revival 
swept with irresistible force through the rem.ain- 
ing services of the day and on up to midnight. 
I found my way to the altar with many other 
eager souls at night, and the impression of that 
hour has never been effaced. Inspired by the 
bishop's burning words, ministers went out into 
the congregation to plead with the unsaved, and 
Christian people, with tears streaming from their 
eyes, brought their unconverted friends to Christ. 



As a Preacher. 



125 



There was joy among the angels that night. The 
good news which went up from Dixon set the 
heavenly bells a-ringing," 

A convincing proof of his pulpit power is 
the fact that many persons who had been preju- 
diced against him were completely captured when 
they heard him. 

At one of the New England Conferences, a 
lady of refinement was overheard saying on Satur- 
day: "I shall never like Bishop Joyce. He is too 
noisy — a typical Westerner." On Sunday the 
bishop preached for an hour and a half, and had 
the audiences completely in his power. The next 
morning the same lady was heard to say to a 
friend: "O, did you hear Bishop Joyce yesterday.^ 
I never heard such a sermon before. I wish he 
had never stopped." 

At the opening of the Philadelphia Confer- 
ence at Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1901, Bishop 
Joyce made the opening prayer. It was a pe- 
tition of great solemnity and tenderness. Immedi- 
ately following was to have been the address of 

welcome on behalf of the city by Judge S , a 

prominent lawyer. When he was introduced he 
said with deep feeling that he had come prepared 
to give a formal address of welcome to the Con- 
ference, but that the prayer of the bishop had 
awakened memories and longings in his soul that 



126 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



led him, instead of making the expected address, 
to ask the prayers of the Conference for his own 
soul. His remarks created a profound impression. 
The Spirit of God was poured out upon the peo- 
ple, and then and there a revival broke out which 
resulted not only in the blessing of this prominent 
lawyer, but which led to the conversion of over 
one hundred people by the following Sunday 
night. 

Perhaps the most remarkable fact of all was 
that he should have had such power in preaching 
through interpreters. In Korea and China he 
spent two years. All his preaching to the natives 
was done through interpreters. Yet hundreds 
were converted under his preaching. We have 
understood that nothing so much interested his 
colleagues of the Board of Bishops, in the report 
which he made to them on his return, as this fact. 
One of their number reports that body of devout 
men as profoundly moved by Bishop Joyce's de- 
scription of the conversions which thus took place. 

As for Bishop Joyce himself in making the 
report, the tears poured down his cheeks as he 
cried: "O brethren! Let us give the Holy Ghost 
a chance!" That is, trust the Holy Ghost to 
effect immediate results in the conversion of souls. 

When asked by an eminent Christian worker 



As a Preacher. 



127 



what he considered the secret of his power over 
audiences, he repHed: "I have learned the secret 
of absolute dependence on the Holy Spirit." 

From all we know of the bishop's methods it 
is fair to infer that he meant that he prepared to 
preach as though there were no God, and then he 
trusted God as if he had not prepared at all. 

The greatest result of Bishop Joyce's preach- 
ing was not seen at the Conferences where he 
preached, but at the Conferences that followed. 
The new faith and courage that his words in- 
spired in the preachers was the most significant 
and important result of his Conference preaching. 
To send fifty or a hundred baffled and discour- 
aged men back to their work with a new sense 
of their mission and with a new grip on the re- 
alities of Christianity is a tremendous achieve- 
m.ent. Yet that is exactly the result of Bishop 
Joyce's ministry at every Annual Conference he 
held. He may not have been a great preacher 
according to the coldly classical standards of aca- 
demic critics. But if the preaching described in 
the Book of Acts was great preaching, then Bishop 
Joyce's preaching was great. 

When some leaders of the Church speak at 
our Conferences we preachers go away praising 
the eloquence of the speaker, or otherwise. When 



128 Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 

others speak we go away asking God to make us 
truer men, and loving Jesus Christ with a new 
passion of devotion. And Bishop Joyce always 
had this effect upon preachers. They went away 
saying, not "What an orator is Demosthenes!" 
but "Lead us against Philip 



CHAPTER XII. 



Bishop Joyce and Foreign Missions. 
METHODIST bishop has extraordinary 



— ^ the missionary work of the Church. It is 
doubtful if any other class of men comes into 
contact with so many different nationahties, and 
is able to judge from close observation of the 
conditions existing in the various countries of the 
earth. Our State Department at Washington 
might do well to keep this fact in mind. 

In 1892 Bishop Joyce presided over the five 
Conferences in Europe. In 1894 he had epis- 
copal supervision of our work in Mexico, involv- 
ing a stay of some length there. In 1896 he had 
charge of our Conferences in Japan, China, and 
Korea. He spent two years in these countries. 
He presided twice over each of the Conferences 
and Missions in those three countries, returning to 
the United States in 1898 by way of India and 
Malaysia. In 1903, and again in 1904, he had 
supervision of our work in South America, making 
two episcopal tours through that continent. 




become acquainted with 



9 



129 



130 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



On his return from the Orient he repeatedly 
declared that if he were a young man he would 
cast his lot as a Christian worker among China's 
millions. The opportunity there presented for 
great results strongly appealed to him. 

This love of missions w^as strong in him when 
he w^as a pastor. It became a passion with him 
as his episcopal visits to the mission fields brought 
to him a wider understanding of the needs and 
opportunities of those fields. 

When he was a pastor in Lafayette, Indiana, 
his interest in missions won him the affectionate 
admiration of the women of the. Woman's Foreign 
Missionary Society in Indiana. A visiting speaker, 
Mrs. Jennie Fowler Willing, of Chicago, describes 
in the Northwestern Christian Advocate a scene in 
which his interest in missions showed itself, as 
follows : 

"The Indiana State Woman's Foreign Mis- 
sionary Society was in session in his Church in 
Lafayette. We held our anniversary on Sunday 
evening. All the Methodist Churches in the city 
closed their services to come and bid the women 
God-speed in their work. Just before starting for 
the Church that evening I said to Miss Sample, 
the State corresponding secretary, ^Katie^ we 
ought to get a thousand dollars from that congre- 
gation to-night. Dare we ask the Lord to make 
them give it?' 

" ^Indeed we dare,' was the bright reply. ^He 
can do it easily enough.' 



Bishop Joyce and Foreign Missions, 131 



"So hand in hand we went into the Presence 
and asked our Father for the thousand dollars. 
When we met Dr. Joyce in his study I told him 
what we had asked for. 

" 'm as sorry as I can be/ he replied, ^but 
you can't get any money to-night. The other 
pastors said they 'd give up their services on con- 
dition that no money was asked for.' 

" ^Never mind, Katie,' I whispered aside to 
my friend, Ve asked for a thousand dollars. Let 
us hold steady for it.' 

"So strong was her faith, and so warm her 
zeal for the work, that I think if we had prayed 
as Edward Payson said he dared do — asking the 
Lord for a couple of planets for his private ac- 
commodation — she would have looked for them to 
come sailing along. 

"I spoke first, and while Miss Sample was 
talking. Dr. Joyce leaned over toward me behind 
her and whispered, ^We '11 make an appeal for 
help, Official Board or no Official Board; and 
you 've got to do it.' 

" ^O, no. Doctor, I can't. I never did such a 
thing in my life. I have neither the courage nor 
the skill. And besides, if we ofi^end your Official 
Board we '11 lose heavily in the long run.' 

"He made no reply, but when Miss Sample had 
finished her address he rose and said in substance, 
'Mrs. Willing has a matter to present to which I 
know you will gladly respond.' 

"There I was. Retreat was impossible, so 
with a sharp, quick telegram to the skies for help 
I went at it, explaining the conditions of our 
'sacrifice life memberships,' and asking the people 



132 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



to take them. In a few minutes twenty were 
pledged. That would bring us in four hundred 
dollars, for they were a class of people who do not 
easily forget their promises. By that time we 
were quite as free from care about Official Boards, 
inexperience, and awkwardness as we were about 
where the remaining six hundred was to come from. 

"The next morning Dr. Joyce came into our 
convention, and when opportunity was given he 
said: have a serious accusation to bring against 
Mrs. Willing. She took some life memberships 
last evening and stopped just when her work had 
fairly begun. That 's no way to do with a con- 
gregation in the condition that that one was in.' 

" Well, Doctor,' I replied, 'I plead guilty, and 
I move that you be requested to finish the work 
in which I failed.' 

"There was plenty of assenting applause, and 
he began at once. Two or three times we went on 
our knees to thank God for what He had done for 
us, and at each time except the last as soon as we 
were quiet from our crying for joy he said, 
^That 's all right. You can't be too thankful to 
the Lord ; but I 'm not through yet.' 

"At the end of an hour of such enthusiasm 
as burned into the hearts of those Indiana women 
the conviction that heathen women must be saved, 
at no matter what cost to us, we found that we had 
the thousand dollars pledged, with a good sum 
thrown in for shrinkage, beside the support of sev- 
eral orphans. 

"That was a great deal of money for those 
days, and we all went home from that mount of 



Bishop Joyce and Foreign Missions, 133 



blessing, feeling that it was a love gift from Him 
who is the ^same yesterday, to-day, and forever.' " 

In his episcopal supervision of the foreign 
work Bishop Joyce showed the same painstaking 
care and unflagging energy that had charactei'- 
ized him in the pastorate. Every detail of the 
work, the theological schools, the Book Concerns, 
the Church papers, the Epworth Leagues, the 
Sunday-schools, all these as well as the stationing 
of preachers and the reports from the Churches, 
received the bishop's careful scrutiny. Imagine 
him, for instance, having a few days to spare 
before meeting the Norway Conference, taking a 
trip up the coast for a hundred miles to visit 
every town that had a Methodist Church! 

In all his foreign Conferences, as well as in 
those at home, he started the revival fire. His first 
Missionary Conference was at Lausanne, Switzer- 
land. At the close of his sermon before that Con- 
ference Bishop Joyce did not give an invitation 
to seekers. This was out of deference to the judg- 
ment of colleagues in the Episcopal Board, who 
had told him that he could not secure immediate 
results in preaching through an interpreter. At 
the close of his sermon, however, a Swiss stopped 
him in the aisle and said, "Please tell me how to 
be saved." Gladly Bishop Joyce and the pastor 
tarried behind with the inquirer, and the man was 



134 Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce, 



happily converted. This incident Bishop Joj'ce 
took as God's rebuke to him for his lack of faith, 
and thereafter he made his usual appeal for im- 
mediate decision. 

At Frankfort-on-the-]Main5 in Germany, and 
at Svendborg, Denmark, there were a number of 
conversions. A score or ^lore were converted at 
Cliristiania at the session of the Conference there. 
At Frederickschald, Sweden, he held three serv- 
ices, and many conversions resulted. At Goten- 
berg, Sweden, fifty people came forward seeking 
pardon at the night service, at the session of the 
Sweden Conference. At Stockholm, where he or- 
ganized and set off from the Norway Conference 
the new Finland-St. Petersburo; Mission, sixtv-five 
persons sought Christ on Conference Sunday. 
And so he spread the flame tlii'ough Italy and 
Switzerland. 

The secretary of the Conference in Germany 
wrote of the 1893 session at Frankfort: 

"The proceedings were marked by a kind and 
brotherly spirit that prevailed until the close of 
the session. I am sure that the beloved president 
of the Conference has done very much to keep all 
brethren in a good temper, and it was by no means 
an act of formalitj" when the Conference in a 
series of resolutions expressed its heartiest thanks 
to Bishop Joyce for his wise and fatherly counsels, 
his careful direction of the business of the Con- 



Bishop Joyce and Foreign Missions, 135 



ference, his heart-stirring addresses, his inspiring 
sermon, and his blessed co-operation in the divine 
services, and that it was its desire to see him again 
as president of the Conference in not too distant 
a future. The Bishop has won all hearts." 

It was the same in the more northerly Confer- 
ences of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. It is 
recorded: "These were all scenes of revival power 
under the earnest ministrations of the good bishop, 
who will be held in loving remembrance throughout 
Scandinavia," 

And even in Bulgaria, the "burnt district" of 
Christendom, where forty accessions in a year for 
the entire mission field was the banner achieve- 
ment up to the time of his visit, twelve persons 
were converted under his preaching on Conference 
Sunday, most of them being young men. 

On visiting Bulgaria he had to stay in quaran- 
tine for a short time. His description of meeting 
the brethren in that strange land reminds us of St. 
Paul's meeting the brethren from Rome at the 
"Three Taverns:" 

"To go from Stockholm to Bulgaria, by the 
only route left open to us, and comparatively free 
from quarantine necessitated a journey of one 
thousand eight hundred and seventy-seven miles. 
When we reached Vienna, we found that low 
water and prospective quarantine forbade our 
going to Sistov by steamer, on the Danube, so 



136 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



we went on the ^Orient Express/ but when we 
reached Rustchuk we found ourselves in quaran- 
tine to stay twenty-four hours. But the time 
passed, and at an early hour in the morning we 
took steamer for a forty-mile ride up the Danube 
to Sistov, which we reached in good season, and 
opened the Conference on time. 

"I think the presence and cheerful words of 
friends were never more appreciated, or did us 
more good, than did the coming to us of Rev. 
George S. Davis, our superintendent in Bulgaria, 
and Rev. T. Constantine, our pastor at Rust- 
chuk, about the middle of the day of our stay in 
quarantine. We had never met before, and ex- 
cept in a very general way we were strangers to 
each other. But we were Methodist preachers, 
and there was a heart relation between us; and 
as soon as they heard that we were in the quaran- 
tine station they came to us at once — that is, they 
came as near as they were allowed to approach, 
which was within one hundred feet of the place 
where we were staying — -and there we stood that 
distance apart and talked. Of course, we could 
not shake hands, except in our hearts, and that 
we did most heartily, I assure you. How their 
words cheered us, helped us! They brought us 
a good dinner — had to put it on the ground, one 
hundred feet away — the guard brought it to us, 
then in the shade of the building where we were 
staying, on a little table which the guard had 
furnished my wife spread out that dinner., A 
physician from The Hague, Holland, who was also 
brought into quarantine with us, we asked to share 
our dinner with us. We three gathered about 



Bishop Joyce and Foreign Missions, 137 



the little table; we bowed our headsj and with full 
hearts thanked God for food, for friends, and for 
the heart-ties of Methodist preachers. We found 
this physician to be an earnest Christian, a well 
educated and thorough gentleman; and his genial 
and happy spirit helped us greatly in passing 
through the twenty-four hours of quarantine. We 
shall never forget him." 

"A man earnestly seeking Christ traveled over 
one hundred miles to hear Bishop Joyce preach at 
the session of the Bulgaria Mission. He was hap- 
pily converted, and in his gratitude sincerely pro- 
posed that when the bishop reached his city he 
would draw him through the streets with six of 
the large buffaloes found there. The matter was 
compromised by the bishop taking supper with 
him, and at the table with the bishop was the 
presiding elder and both the old and the new pas- 
tor, and numerous other friends." 

Bishop Joyce made the episcopal visitation to 
Mexico, and presided at the Annual Conference 
in January, 1895. Dr. John W. Butler writes 
that the bishop gave them the motto, "A thou- 
sand souls for Christ in 1895." "The workers in 
this city caught the inspiration, and have done 
the best work of their lives this year. Nine hun- 
dred and eight accessions in ten months is a record 
unheard of before in any one place in the Mis- 
sion." 

This impulse to soul-winning, which he com- 
municated to the preachers everywhere he went, 



138 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



was the most valuable feature of his valuable work. 
In it he most resembled his Master, who said: "I 
have sent you forth to reap . . . that he that 
soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together.'' 
During his two years of supervision in China 
Bishop Joyce visited every part of the field, pene- 
trating into the interior of China further than 
any other bishop had ever done, and holding the 
West China Mission Conference. To reach 
Chentu, in West China, the furthest point reached 
by him, he went by steamer from Shanghai one 
thousand miles up the river, then five hundred miles 
further by house boat, and the last three hundred 
miles by chair, carried by coolies. Mrs. Joyce 
accompanied him all the way except the last three 
hundred miles. She staid with the missionaries 
at Chungking, while he made the chair trip on 
to Chentu. 

In China many missionaries said repeatedly 
to Bishop Joyce that he could not expect immedi- 
ate results in preaching such as could be secured 
in preaching to audiences reared in Christian lands. 
They said it required years of instruction before 
the people could understand the plan of salvation. 
But Bishop Joyce believed that immediate results 
could be secured even in preaching to the raw 
pagans, and his sermons usually were planned with 
the view of securing the immediate conversion of 



Bishop Joyce and Foreign Missions. 139 



his hearers. The results abundantly justified his 
view, for everywhere pagans were converted under 
his preaching. This unprecedented fact pro- 
foundly moved his colleagues of the Board of 
Bishops, when reported to them on Bishop Joyce's 
return. And it was this fact — the willingness 
of the Divine Spirit to seal the preaching of the 
Word to the immediate conversion of pagans, that 
led Bishop Joyce, in concluding his report to his 
colleagues, to cry out with streaming eyes, "O 
brethren! let us give the Holy Ghost a chance 

In the Christian Advocate the Rev. Don W. 
Nichols wrote from Kiukiang, China, as follows: 

"The recent session of our Conference was the 
most blessed in the history of the Mission. The 
visitation of Bishop Joyce has been a great bless- 
ing to every member of the Mission. It was a re- 
vival Conference in every sense of the word from 
beginning to end. The power and influence of 
the Holy Spirit were graciously manifested. The 
Bible readings and addresses of the bishop were 
a source of great profit to every one. Sunday was 
a day never to be forgotten by those present. It 
was a great day in the Israel of God in Central 
China. The love-feast began at nine o'clock, con- 
ducted by C. F. Kupf er ; sixty people gave ringing 
testimonies to the power of Jesus to save. These 
testimonies were from the old man of seventy-five 
down to the little girl of ten years. The Bishop's 
morning sermon through an interpreter was one 



140 Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



full of blessing and comfort to all. A wave of 
salvation moved every heart; some were moved to 
tears of joy, while others shouted, ^Hallelujah!' 
Fully a dozen persons presented themselves at the 
altar to seek their souls' salvation. At 2.30 an 
Epworth League rally w^as held, the bishop and 
members of the Mission delivering addresses; at 
4.30 the bishop preached to the foreign com- 
munity a sermon that made a profound impres- 
sion on the minds of all present. At 7.30 the 
writer preached and conducted a revival service. 
Some thirty persons came to the altar — the mourn- 
ers'-bench — to seek salvation. The Holy Ghost 
came upon every believing heart. The voice of 
prayer could be heard all over the house, three 
and four praying at the same time, while souls 
were being converted and praising God. On Mon- 
day night the writer conducted another revival 
service. Again the altar was crowded with seek- 
ers ; men, women, and children were converted, and 
more than thirty united with the Church. The 
battle cry is, ^A thousand souls for Christ in Cen- 
tral China during this Conference year.' The 
visitation of Bishop Joyce has given the greatest 
satisfaction, and we rejoice that he is to be with 
us again next year. We are sure that the results 
will prove the wisdom of the plan of having the 
bishop remain two consecutive years in charge of 
the same field." 

The Rev. J. J. Banbury wrote from Kiukiang, 
China : 

"Bishop Joyce's presence among us was truly 
a benediction. Our meeting was marked by an 



Bishop Joyce and Foreign Missions, 141 



old-fashioned revival spirit, and some twenty of 
the natives have professed conversion. At the reg- 
ular prayer-meeting last evening about forty per- 
sons testified to the power of Christ to save and 
sanctify. It was a glorious and blessed sight. We 
believe that the time for the outpouring of the 
Holy Spirit in much power has arrived, and are 
expecting to embrace the opportunity and bring 
many to Christ." 

A presiding elder wrote concerning the Hing- 
hua Conference: 

"Bishop Joyce made every session a season of 
spiritual blessing and profitable instruction, as well 
as of inspiration. The Sabbath will indeed live in 
history. The power of God came down upon 
preacher and people." 

The bishop himself said: 

"Sunday, November 22d, at Foochow, and Sun- 
day, November 29th, at Hinghua, were two of 
the most wonderful Sundays I have ever had in 
all my life. I have seen some gracious and marvel- 
ous results on Conference Sundays, but these two 
Sundays went beyond anything I have ever seen 
anywhere. The blessed, old-fashioned Gospel, 
under the blessing of the Holy Spirit, does pro- 
duce old-fashioned revivals, old-fashioned conver- 
sions, and old-fashioned victories." 

In a letter to Dr. R. J. Cooke, an intimate 
friend. Bishop Joyce TVTites: 

"It is a sight never to be forgotten and one 
that fills the soul with joy to see heathen men 



142 Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



and women come forward and kneel down to be 
prayed for, and give themselves to Christ as the 
Savior of their souls; and then to see how the 
native Christians get down by them and instruct 
them, and tell them how to believe, that they may 
receive the pardon of their sins and the witness 
of the Holy Spirit. It is a great joy to know — 
to see the demonstration of it before your own 
eyes — that the dear old Gospel preached in the 
old-fashioned way will be attended by the Holy 
Spirit's blessed influence all around, and all over 
this world. . . . Paul was right. ^It is the power 
of God unto salvation' in all parts of the world 
and among all people." 

While on board a vessel in Foochow Harbor 
Bishop Joyce fell through a hatchwaj^ and was 
severely injured. For some days he was doubtful 
as to whether he would recover. To his wife he 
said: "Notliing would suit me better than to die 
here and be buried by the side of Bishop Wiley." 
Bishop Wiley, one of his dearest friends, died at 
Foochow in 1884, and was buried in the English 
cemetery in Foochow. But Bishop Joyce was not 
to finish his life work in Asia, but in his own land. 

It is interesting to note that among the many 
resolutions of thanks and appreciation passed by 
the Conferences everywhere over which he pre- 
sided. Bishop Joyce seems to have cherished with 
peculiar tenderness the many tributes from the 
Conferences in foreign lands. 



BisJiop Joyce and Foreign Missions, 143 



After their return from China Bishop and Mrs. 
Joyce had in their home several years two Chinese 
girls who have prepared themselves for work 
among their own people under their watchful and 
loving care. It is not many people who are so 
profoundly interested in the extension of the Re- 
deemer's kingdom as that they will allow the in- 
vasion of their home for years together by stran- 
gers to further that end. Yet this Bishop and 
Mrs. Joyce did. It speaks volumes not only for 
his own, but his companion's devotion to the cause 
of missions. 

Mrs. Annie E. Smiley wrote in the Zion^s 
Herald of a little incident at the International 
Epworth League Convention at Detroit in 1903, 
as follows: 

"In reading Bishop Berry's tribute to Bishop 
Joyce in a recent number of the Epworth Herald, 
it recalled an utterance of Bishop Joyce at a 
missionary rally at the Detroit Epworth League 
Convention two years ago. 

"A young man who was going out as a foreign 
missionary had been introduced to the convention, 
and had made a few remarks. Following him came 
his father, a IMethodist preacher, who said a few 
brave words in a voice which trembled. Every 
heart was moved, and when Bishop Joyce, who 
was presiding at the meeting, arose there was per- 
fect silence in the crowded room. 'I want to say,' 
Bishop Joyce began, 'that if I was as young as 



144 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



our brother here, and if I was of the same mind 
that I am this morning, not three days would pass 
before I offered myself to go as a foreign mis- 
sionary.' Then, after a pause, he said with great 
feeling: ^When the waking angel knocks at the 
door of my dusty bedchamber, what does it matter 
whether I am lying in this country, or beside 
Bishop Wiley in China?' 

"A quick rush of tears blotted out the in- 
spired face of our beloved Bishop from my eyes, 
but I shall always remember him as he stood and 
uttered these words which expressed his heart- 
yearning for the salvation of the whole wide 
world." 

In his first visit to South America, for which 
he sailed late in 1902, Bishop Joyce began his 
work on the west coast. He visited our work in 
Chile, preaching and visiting the most important 
centers of our mission work, and holding the Andes 
Conference. From Santiago, Chile, he proceeded 
by train and stage over the Andes Mountains to 
Mendoza, and to Buenos Ayres in Argentina. De- 
scribing this trip Bishop Joyce wrote: 

"We left Santiago by train late in the after- 
noon, and at ten o'clock that night we reached 
Los Andes, a town a little way up the mountain. 
We stayed there that night, leaving next morning 
early, on a narrow gauge road, for a run of eight- 
een miles to Saltos, which is as far up the mountain 
as the road is yet finished on the Chilean side. 



Bishop Joyce and Foreign Missions. 145 



''Here the company furnishes coaches for the 
passengers, or horses and mules for those who pre- 
fer that sort of transportation over the mountains. 
All the heavy baggage is strapped to the backs 
of mules. Sixty-six people were to be taken across 
the range, and only ten of the entire number pre- 
ferred the horseback transportation, all the rest 
chose the coaches, myself and wife among the num- 
ber. The smaller coaches carry four persons each, 
the larger ones six each. There are four horses to 
each coach, hitched abreast. Such driving as those 
Chilean fellows do, we have not found anywhere 
else in the v/orld. Hooting, yelling, slashing, 
whipping, away they go. A hard place in the 
road is reached — the horses get up a strike, balk, 
won't go — men get out, drivers slash and yell, 
men lift and push at the wheels. Suddenly the 
horses dash away on the double quick, and we get 
back into the coach at pretty much the same rate 
of speed. 

"From Saltos, on the Chilean side of the moun- 
tain, to Los Cuevas on the Argentine side, the 
distance is forty miles. This is the gap between 
the two points of the railroad — and which we hope 
will be filled up by the completed road when we 
come this way again a year from this time. We 
left Saltos at 8.30 in the morning, and reached 
Juncal at 11.30, where we got breakfast. After 
this, with fresh horses and a new driver we began 
the more decided ascent of the mountain, and under 
the pressing methods of the drivers, and taking 
advantage of every little bit of level road, we 
climbed toward the summit of the great range. 
The road is like a huge stairway, only we do not 
10 



146 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



climb by stepping from one step to the other — we 
travel the steps lengthwise, at each end there is a 
curve around which the horses are driven — many 
times if there is a half a chance, the driver makes 
the curve on a good sweeping gallop. Every 
curve lifts us a little higher up the mountain. 
Ever}^ little while we change horses. Late in the 
afternoon we reach the great summit, and find 
we are at an elevation of twelve thousand seven 
hundred feet. The baggage train crosses at a 
point not far from thirteen thousand five hundred 
feet. On the summit we rest awhile, and feast our 
eyes and hearts on the indescribable beauty, maj- 
esty, and glory of this never to be forgotten scene, 
with the words upon our lips and the feeling in 
our souls, 

"'Great and marvelous are the works of the infinite 
and eternal God 

"We begin the descent on the Argentine side 
of the great mountain. We have the sensations 
of unusual exultation — the horse and drivers seem 
to share the great joy with us, and away we go 
down old Andes' winding way, and in a few min- 
utes we have dropped three thousand feet down 
the great mountain side. On we go until, near 
six o'clock in the evening, we reach Los Cuevas, 
the mountain town to which on the Argentine side 
the new railroad is finished. Between 8.30 in the 
morning and six in the evening we have traveled 
forty miles in these mountain coaches. 

"We are glad to see the railway train, we are 
soon aboard and on our way of a few miles run 
to Puerto del Inca, where we spend the night in 



Bishop Joyce and Foreign Missions. 147 



a comfortable hotel. Next Monday at seven we 
leave for Mendoza. Soon after leaving Inca we 
have the wonderful good fortune to get a good 
view of the highest peak in the Andes range, known 
as the Aconcaqua. When Humboldt visited South 
America he supposed he had settled it that Chim- 
borazo was the highest point in the Andes range, 
but it is now known that in height Aconcaqua sur- 
passes Chimborazo. 

"We reach Mendoza at two o'clock in the after- 
noon, and friends meet us at the depot. We re- 
main in this city a few days to inspect the work of 
the Church and to preach for the English and 
Spanish congregations. This is the great grape 
region of all this country, and the fruit is almost 
as delicious in taste as the grapes that grow on 
the slopes of Vesuvius. 

"The Methodist Conference met in the city 
of Rosario, and Sunday night a great audience 
was present. During the services we learned that 
people of nine nationalities were present; but 
counting England and the United States as one, 
so far as language was concerned, we had eight 
languages in the congregation. At the close of 
the services I had the people sing the doxology, 
every man in his native language, and it was sung 
in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, 
Dutch, Welsh, and Flemish. 

"Dr. J. F. Thompson preached on 'Giving the 
heart to God.' At the close of his sermon, an in- 
vitation was given for those to come forward who 
would now give their hearts to God. In a few 
minutes thirty-four persons were kneeling at the 
chancel rail. Several of them were converted, and 



148 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



gave testimony to that fact. Among the number 
was a son of the pastor. The entire audience was 
wonderfully moved. Not more than half the peo- 
ple who wanted to hear the sermon and enjoy the 
services were able to get into the building. In 
the memory of all who were present the scene will 
live forever. 

"The Sunday before the meeting of the An- 
nual Conference I preached twice, and delivered 
two addresses in Buenos Aj^res. Dr. A. W. Green- 
man, the presiding elder of the Buenos Ayres Dis- 
trict, was my interpreter at three of these serv- 
ices — two in Spanish and one in Italian. He did 
his work well, and when the last service for the day 
closed he was about as weary as I was. But we 
both felt the day had been a good one for Christ's 
cause, and we specially felt that the fourth service 
was a helpful one. The official members of the 
Church and many others came forward, and prayed 
for the enriching of their spiritual life, and for 
such a spiritual equipment as they needed for the 
right sort of work during the Conference year 
upon which they were soon to enter. This service 
was in the Second Spanish Church, one of the 
strongest Spanish Churches we have in the city. 

"We spent March 26th, 27th, and part of 
28th in the city of Montevideo, looking into the 
work of our schools and Churches, preaching for 
our English and Spanish congregations, and lay- 
ing the corner-stone of our new church. 

"The laying of the corner-stone was an occa- 
sion of much importance to our cause in this cap- 
ital city of Uruguay. Careful preparation had 
been made for the services by Dr. Craver, the pre- 



Bishop Joyce and Foreign Missions. 149 



siding elder; the pastor. Rev. George P. Howard, 
and the lay members of the committee. Invitations 
had been sent to the president of the republic, the 
members of the cabinet, members of the supreme 
court, members of the city government, business 
and professional men, and many others, including 
every class of citizens. 

"In the evening I preached to our Spanish con- 
gregation. The church was crowded. Dr. S. P. 
Graver was my interpreter. The Holy Spirit was 
manifestly present. At the close of the sermon 
the official members of both the English and the 
Spanish Churches came forward seeking the en- 
riching of their spiritual experience and life, and 
such equipment for their work for the year they 
were then entering upon, as only the Holy Spirit 
could give. After this the invitation was given 
to those who wanted to seek the Lord in the par- 
don of their sins, and receive the witness of the 
Holy Spirit to that great fact, and more than 
thirty persons accepted the invitation." 

Of his homeward journey he wrote as fol- 
lows : 

"At Rio de Janeiro, the capital of the republic 
of Brazil, where we had to change steamers, we 
were met, on the arrival of our steamer, by Brothers 
Tucker, Kennedy, and Parker of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, South, and taken to the de- 
lightful home of Brother Tucker. To him and his 
good wife, and to Brothers Kennedy and Parker, 
we are indebted for charming Christian hospitality 
during the day we were in that great city of six 



150 



Life of Isaac Wilson JcTyce. 



hundred thousand people. It gave us joy to meet 
these brethren, and we rejoiced over the success 
God is steadily giving them in the city and in the 
republic, and the growing victories the Lord of the 
harvest is enabling them to win." 

Early in 1904 Bishop Joyce made his second 
visitation to the South American Conferences. 
This time he began on the Atlantic seaboard, and 
worked his way through the continent to Chile. 
After completing his work in the Andes region 
he sailed for California, reaching Los Angeles in 
time for the General Conference, which met there 
in May. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



His Missionary Tours Through Asia. 

ISHOP JOYCE made the following re- 
port to the Board of Bishops of his mis- 
sionary administration in Asia: 

"I regard it as one of the great opportunities 
of my life that came to me in my appointment to 
visit our missions in Eastern Asia, and to remain 
in these fields two years, or until I had made two 
tours through the three countries and presided 
twice at all the Conferences and annual meetings 
of the missions. 

"I left the United States in the month of June, 
1896, and reached Yokohama the 5th of July. 
I was met at my steamer by missionaries, native 
preachers, and others, and their hearty greeting 
ga-ve a sense of home feeling at once, which grew 
in increasing delights as the days came and went. 
Between landing and the meeting of the Confer- 
ences the days were spent in visiting our work in 
and about Yokohama, meeting friends, delivering 
addresses, preaching in the churches, and in vari- 
ous other ways becoming acquainted with the field 
and our work. 

"Japan is a beautiful country, and has many 
attractions wholly peculiar to itself. Beginning 

151 




152 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



in the extreme south with the Loochoo Islands and 
going to the extreme north to the Hokaido, the 
distance is three thousand miles. The aA^erage 
width of the country is perhaps less than two hun- 
dred miles. There are crowded into this small 
space forty-three millions of people. 



"I am glad to say that I have been in every 
place in the Empire of Japan where we have a 
missionary stationed, and in each place have 
preached and conducted other services. I have 
also been in several places where we have no mis- 
sionary stationed, but where we have native preach- 
ers or teachers. The sessions of the Conferences, 
both in 1896 and 1897, were interesting occasions, 
showing not only the thorough work that had been 
done by our missionaries in the past, but also the 
conscientious work that our present force is seek- 
ing to continue in every part of the field. The 
work of the sessions also showed the intelligent 
devotion and consecration of our native preachers 
and helpers, and their love for the Church that 
had brought them so many advantages, had en- 
riched them with so many blessings and was prov- 
ing to be so helpful to them in their individual 
as well as in their home lives and in the general 
good of their country. The testimonies given in 
the Conference love-feasts were revelations of rich 
experiences quite in keeping with the testimonies 
we hear at home on such occasions. In the debates 
during the sessions the native preachers showed an 
intelligent comprehension of all subjects relating 
to the Church, her breadth of purpose and her 



Missionary Tours Through Asia. 



153 



determination to do her utmost not only in bring- 
ing Japan but all the world to a true knowledge 
of God and of His revelation to men. Such cities 
as Sappora, Hakodate, Hirosaki, Sendai, Yoko- 
hama, Tokyo, Nagoya, Kioto, Kobe, Nagasaki, 
Kumamoto, and Kagoshima, as well as almost in- 
numerable towns and villages, show the inviting 
wealth and greatness of opportunity to the Church, 
not only to continue her work, but to increase her 
diligence and her giving both of means and work- 
ers to the ultimate winning of these wonderful 
Japanese peoples to a loyal belief in God and in 
His Son Jesus Christ and in the Holy Ghost. 



"If the Church knew this field as well and 
thoroughly a§ the missionaries know it and those 
who have visited it, it would be anxious to send 
forward all needed supplies in means and workers 
a.nd meet every spiritual demand of the country. 



"We go from Japan to Korea. In doing so 
we go by steamer from Yokohama to Nagasaki, 
a distance of eight hundred miles. At Nagasaki 
we transfer to a smaller steamer for Chemulpo. 
On our way we touch at Fusan in Korea, where 
the ships touch in going to and returning from 
Vladivostok. From Fusan we go around the point 
of the island and land at Chemulpo. We tarry 
for a day and night in Chemulpo inspecting our 
work, which is in charge of C. H. Jones. Hotel 
accommodations in the town are very good and 
comfortable, and we enjoy our stay and are pleased 



154 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



with the growth^ aggressiveness^ thoroughness, and 
outlook of our work. 

"From Chemulpo we go up the Han River 
sixty-two miles in a little steamer, and then are 
carried across the country in a chair to Seoul, the 
capital of Korea. In Seoul we have the Paichai 
college, also a printing-press, bookstore, hospital, 
and evangelistic work. The Woman's Foreign 
Missionary Society has a school, hospital, dispen- 
sary, and evangelistic work. 



"Korea is a little over seven hundred miles in 
length and a little less than two hundred and fifty 
miles average in width, and in this small area are 
crowded twelve millions of people. The country 
has never been overrun by the Buddhist priesthood 
and its teachings to the degree and extent that 
Japan and China have been. What may be called 
the 'lower classes' are to a degree believers in 
Buddhism. What are called the 'educated classes' 
are influenced by the teachings of Confucius. The 
people, however, are easy to reach, and they are 
ever ready to listen to the preaching of the Gospel. 
Within the last four years there has been a won- 
derful turning of the people in all parts of the 
country to the teachings of the New Testament 
and the ministrations of the missionaries in chapels, 
villages, and everywhere else that the missionary 
stops to give a message to the multitude. Ap- 
parently all Korea is ready to give such attention 
to the Gospel of Jesus Christ as would indicate 
the readiness of that country to believe in the 
doctrines and teachings of the Christian religion. 



Missionary/ Tours Through Asia. 155 



If all the missions now at work in that country 
could be re-enforced to the extent of the needs 
now manifest in the field with means and workers, 
it is the conviction of those best informed that in 
a period of ten or fifteen years the whole country 
would be practically Christian. A visit to Korea 
and its peoples is surely a great event in one's 
life. I am glad I was favored with the privilege 
of twice visiting the country. I am glad also 
that on one of my visits I had the honor of an in- 
terview with the kingj and, in response to some 
kind things he said of our missionaries, of Amer- 
icans, and of the United States, I had the oppor- 
tunity to thank him for the kindly services he and 
other Koreans in official positions had rendered our 
school and other forms of our work. 

"The annual sessions of the mission were not 
the only occasions of interest, but to me were to 
an unusual degree full of interest and profit. I 
not only preached to our native converts, which 
of course had to be done through an interpreter, 
but I preached to the English-speaking people on 
several Sunday afternoons in our college chapel. 
One afternoon I had an audience of forty people 
who could speak English. In that congregation 
of only forty persons there were nine nationalities. 
This shows the attention that little Korea is at- 
tracting among the nations of the world, for the 
representatives of these nine nationalities were not 
tourists, but were residents of the city and repre- 
sented in some capacity the interests of their na- 
tions. We are building a church not far from the 
king's palace, a commodious, well appointed, brick 
church that will seat one thousand people. When 



166 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



I left Korea the building had not cost up to that 
dat^ any of our societies a dollar, the expense had 
been provided for by the missionaries subscribing 
and paying the money out of their salaries, and 
by contributions of the native Christians. They 
ought to have help, because the enterprise is a 
burden greater than the financial strength of the 
missionaries and native Christians can carry. 

"The native Christians do not worship to- 
gether in Korea as we do in America. The Church 
is divided into two parts, one for men and one 
for women, and the pulpit is placed so that the 
minister can see easily both parts of the congre- 
gation. The men sit on one side of a wall or 
curtain, and the women on the other. They sit 
on the floor on bamboo mats, and all join in the 
singing and in every other part of the worship, 
such as the Lord's Prayer, Apostles' Creed, and 
the Ten Commandments. They give the most 
earnest attention, and no matter how long you 
preach they manifest not the slightest sign of 
weariness or lack of interest. I shall always retain 
an exceedingly happy memory of the love-feasts 
I attended with these native converts. Their won- 
derful testimonies, their clear statements of the 
pardoning power of Jesus Christ, of the comforts 
derived from the presence and guidance of the 
Holy Ghost, the expression of their unbounded 
faith in the promises of God, their great love for 
our Heavenly Father, and also their love for the 
Church and the missionaries, all combined, made an 
impression on my mind that I will carry with me 
all my life. I know of no mission field anywhere 
that has more promise in it, nor one that seems 



Missionary Tours ThrougK Asia. 



157 



so near to a complete surrender to Jesus Christ 
and all that implies, than this strange and inter- 
esting Korean field. All that is needed, in my 
judgment, for a speedy and abiding conquest, is 
sufficient means and the needed number of workers. 

^^We go from Korea to North China, touching 
at Chef 00, one of the important places of the 
China Inland Mission and also of the Presbyterian 
Mission. We land at Tientsin, where we have a 
Boys' Boarding and Day School, also two mis- 
sions, a street chapel, and three homes for mis- 
sionaries. The Woman's Foreign Missionary Soci- 
ety have a large and well furnished hospital for 
women and children. Our work here is on a good 
foundation, is well organized, well managed, and 
has a steady development. From Tientsin to 
Pekin, the way I had to go the first time, is very 
nearly one hundred and fifty miles. Pekin has a 
population in the neighborhood of one million 
people. It is a city full of interest to travelers. 
Being the capital of the empire, here are gathered 
the ministers of State representing all the coun- 
tries of the world that have commercial or other 
relations with China. Upon the streets as well as 
in social gatherings and Church services, you will 
meet people from almost every country of the 
world. Many missionary societies are represented 
in this great center, but so great are the needs 
and so varied the demands and so important the 
situation, that if all the missionary societies now 
at work in all China were to be represented in this 
great million population center, they would in no 
sense of the word crowd upon each other, nor be 
in each other's way, nor do other than help each 



158 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



other in their great work of as speedily as possible 
impressing this vast multitude of people with the 
knowledge and importance of the Gospel of Jesus 
Christ. 



"The North China Conference covers an im- 
mense territory, and the reports brought in by 
the missionaries and the native preachers and help- 
ers at both sessions of the Conference, show the 
hold that our work has upon the population, and 
also the thoroughness with which all our helpers do 
their work. Just before the session opened in 
September, 1896, there was a convention of the 
Christian workers in all North China, held in the 
city under the general direction of John R. Mott 
and D. Willard Lj^on, who were making a tour 
of the w^orld in the interests of the College Forward 
Movement on behalf of Missions. I had the honor 
of opening the convention with an address. Dr. 
Sheffield, the president of the college at Tung 
Chow, being my interpreter. The convention was 
in session several days, and was attended with 
great blessings and was of very great benefit to 
the more than two hundred workers that were 
present from almost every part of North China. 
Following this convention the North China Con- 
ference convened in the city in our new church. 
We had the usual order of Conference, beginning 
in the morning at half -past eight o'clock. The 
first half hour was prayer-meeting, and from nine 
to twelve, Conference business. From two to four, 
committee meetings, and from five to six, and from 
seven to eight Bible readings or sermons and re- 
vival services. This was about the usual order at 



Missionary Tours Through Asia, 159 



most of the sessions of the Conferences and annual 
meetings in China. 

"J. H. Pyke, W. T. Hobart, and W. F. 
Walker were my interpreters from time to time. 
Brother Pyke is from Indiana, and Brother Hobart 
is the son of the well-known Dr. Chauncey Hobart, 
of Minnesota. The Conference business was con- 
ducted with as much order, thought fulness, and 
thoroughness as Conference work is usually done 
in the United States. The native brethren from 
time to time took part in the discussions, and 
showed in every way not only an interest, but an 
intelligent comprehension of the questions under 
discussion and the general work and aims of the 
Church. Several of the native members of the 
Conference are graduates of the Pekin University. 
They have had strong financial inducements of- 
fered them to enter government service, but with- 
out hesitation they declined these offers, entered 
the ministry, and are doing in all cases successful 
work as preachers of the Gospel, notwithstanding 
the salary we pay them is in some instances not 
over one-third of what they could have if they 
entered government service. The man Wang, who 
when a boy wheeled his mother in a wheelbarrow 
four hundred miles in order to have her instructed 
in the doctrines of the Gospel by our missionaries 
in Pekin, is a member of this North China Con- 
ference. A large, fine-looking man and a happy- 
hearted, successful worker in the Lord's vineyard. 
The native secretary of this Conference, Tejui, 
would attract attention anywhere. He is over six 
feet tall, has an intelligent face, conducts himself 
with great dignity, and has the love and confidence 



160 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



of all his brethren. Indeed, the native preachers 
and workers are a body of fine-looking men, not 
only in the North China Conference, but in all the 
Conferences and Missions in the empire. 

^'The influence and greatness of our work grew 
upon me rapidly as I went from place to place in 
different parts of China in the prosecution of my 
work. At different times in the North China Con- 
ference, as well as at all other sessions of the vari- 
ous Conferences, people were invited to come for- 
ward and kneel as penitents asking God to pardon 
their sins, and many came. So far as we could see 
they came intelligently, understanding why they 
came and why it was they could come. The native 
preachers, workers, and missionaries knelt by their 
side and instructed them, and many of them found 
Christ in the pardon of their sins, and manifested 
by word and act their great joy over their new- 
found experience. In studying the matter closely 
and continuously from week to week as I went 
from Conference to Conference, I learned this, 
to me, very important truth: after you have 
preached to the heathen mind long enough to get 
that mind to understand in outline the plan of 
redemption, the mind understanding who God is, 
what He has done for the human race; get them 
to understand that Jesus Christ the Son of God 
wants to save every man from sin, and that if men 
will be sorry for their sins and trust God in the 
name of Christ they will receive pardon for sins, 
and the Holy Spirit will bring to their hearts the 
testimony and evidence that God does forgive and 
has forgiven, and that the New Testament tells 
us all about the reasons why Jesus Christ carae 



Missionary Tours Through Asia. 161 



into the world; because men are sinners, they will i 
be lost if they are not saved, and explain how men 
came to be sinners; and with only that much i 
knowledge invite them to come forward and kneel j 
down and seek God, with plain, honest instruc- j 
tion you can rely upon the Holy Spirit to do His j 
work in their souls. In other words and briefer j 
form, whenever a heathen mind gets a clear out- I 
line idea of the plan of the atonement, invite him i 
to act upon that knowledge and trust the Holy i 
Ghost to complete the work, and then after con- ) 
version takes place, take the mind and instruct it J 
more fully and completely in regard to Christian i 
doctrine. Christian experience. Christian living. 
Christian obedience, and Christian character. No \ 
amount of instruction in itself have I ever seen 
effective in leading a mind to surrender to God, \ 
so that the life is made new by a new-found ex- ^ 
perience. Continuous instruction without asking j 
the mind to act and rely upon the Holy Ghost 
for help, is too apt to lead the mind to rely upon j 
the instruction for the renovation of the soul and | 
the transformation of the life rather than to de- 
pend upon Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost ] 
to execute in the soul the ends aimed at in the j 
teaching. Therefore I have found it best, wisest j 
and safest, more abiding, to set forth the simple : 
idea of the atoning work of Jesus Christ in the 
soul, and when the mind fully takes that in, then ] 
invite it to act at once in accepting Jesus Christ 
as a Savior, and depending upon the Holy Ghost i 
for the testimony that the work is done. When i 
that work has been done, let the missionary take 

11 1 



162 Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce, 



the convert and instruct him, thoroughly train him 
by the wisest of instruction in the doctrines of the 
Bible, the principles of the New Testament; in 
short, a complete outfit given through instruction, 
after the mind has an experimental knowledge of 
sins forgiven. 

"The second time that I went to Pekin the 
railroad from Shan Hai Kaun to Tientsin and 
Pekin was finished, so that whereas it took me 
nearly five days to reach Pekin the first year I was 
there, by boat and chair, the second year it took 
me by railroad less than seven hours to go from 
Tientsin to Pekin. 

"The first year I was in China, after my work 
was finished at the North China Conference, ]\lrs. 
Joyce and myself. Brother Hobart and a mission- 
ar}^ of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society 
rode in an American buckboard from Pekin to 
Tsun Hua, the home of Brother Hobart and Dr. 
Hopkins and the Woman's Foreign ^lissionary So- 
ciety ladies, the distance being one hundred miles 
almost directl}'^ north. We had two mules hitched 
to our buckboard, driving them tandem, and we 
made the one hundred miles in three days, most 
of the time over bad roads. We had carts to go 
along with us carrying our bedding, our pro- 
visions, and some of the native helpers. We slept 
at night in Chinese inns, and were comfortable. 
Just beyond Tsun Hua is the Great Wall, said 
to have been built years before the birth of Christ. 
A large company of us had the pleasure of visiting 
it, climbing to the top of it, and, after eating 
our lunch, we sang some Christian hymns and gave 
thanks to God for the coming of a better day and 



Missionary Tours Through Asia, 



163 



a more glorious hope for China. From Tsun Hua 
we went to Tientsin, stopping on the way at some 
of our chapels, taking a mid-day lunch in one, 
spending the night in another. 

"From Tientsin we sailed for Shanghai on our 
way to the Central China Mission. After stop- 
ping a few days in Shanghai we proceeded on our 
way up the Yangtsze River to Kiukiang, where 
the annual meeting was to be held. 



"Our evangelistic work in this Mission has taken 
on new vigor and life in the last two years, and 
is winning success. At the session of 1896 the 
brethren covenanted to pray for a net increase by 
conversions for the coming year of one thousand. 
Throughout the Mission prayer was offered to God 
asking for such evidence of His favor. When the 
Mission convened in 1897 the figures revealed the 
pleasant fact that the gain had been one thousand 
and thirty. They covenanted to pray that the 
net gain might be even greater the coming year, 
and throughout the Mission the whole year prayer 
has ascended to God for the outpouring of His 
Spirit in every part of the Mission. The result is 
that in various parts of the field the success has 
been unusual. 



"From this Mission we returned to Shanghai, 
and from Shanghai we go to Foochow, a distance 
of four hundred and fifty miles. We go, of course, 
by steamer. Our Mission in Foochow began in 
1847, and the field is a great one. We have in 
Foochow the Anglo-Chinese College, the Theolog- 



164: 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



ical School, and in and about Foochow the day 
schools that have obtained such wonderful suc- 
cesses under the direction and care of George S. 
Miner. 



"As is well known. Bishop Wiley died in Foo- 
chow, November, 1884. His love for China was 
all-absorbing. He loved the work, was always in- 
terested in efforts to advance it, remembered with 
great delight the days when he was a medical mis- 
sionary at Foochow, and esteemed it a great priv- 
ilege and honor to visit China as a bishop. He 
did much in many ways to advance the interests 
of the work in that field. He loved the native 
Christians, and they in turn loved him with a great 
and tender love. His body is buried in the little 
cemetery in Foochow. The Sunday of the Con- 
ference session in 1896 was just twelve years to a 
day after his death. I knew Bishop Wiley very 
intimately. I loved him as a brother. I was pas- 
tor of St. Paul's Church, Cincinnati, where he al- 
ways attended when he was at home. I learned to 
know him, and my love for him grew as my knowl- 
edge of him increased. I was, one of the little 
company that bade him farewell in Cincinnati when 
he started for China on his last trip. On that 
Conference Sunday in Foochow when I arose to 
preach I thought of him. I thought of his going 
from that field to liis final resting-place with God 
in heaven. I was in a tender mood. The presence 
of the Lord seemed to be in the congregation, and 
the blessing of God came upon the great audience. 
In the afternoon at the close of the ordination 
service there was a testimony meeting, really a 



Missionary Toiirs Through Asia, 



165 



praise service, and there were many tender and 
beautiful references made to Bishop Wiley, all 
expressive of the great love the native Chinese 
Christians have for him. After the service many 
of the older ones spoke with me, telling me of 
many things they remembered about the Bishop, 
and saying many tender and beautiful things 
about him and his love for them. Altogether this 
session of the Conference was one of very great in- 
fluence, and the preachers all went to their work 
apparently to do better service in the Lord's vine- 
yard than they had ever done before. 



"From Foochow we go to Hing Hua. We go 
twenty-five miles by boat, and are then carried 
fifty miles in a sedan chair. Four stalwart China- 
men carried myself, but two were sufficient for each 
of the other members of the part}^, who were less 
in weight than myself. We traveled twenty-five 
miles the first day, and spent the night in one of 
our chapels. The next morning we started early, 
intending to reach Hing Hua by sundown. Soon 
after we started we were met by native Christians, 
who saluted us with instruments of music and with 
firecrackers. They went with us to the first vil- 
lage, when another company of Christians saluted 
us in like manner and went with us to the next 
village, and so during the entire twenty-five miles 
we had music, firecrackers, and singing of hymns. 
Christians camxe in from the surrounding country 
to join in the procession, glad to show their belief 
in and love for the cause of Christ, and their de- 
votion to Him. They seemed to think or know 



166 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce, 



of no way better than this one of reveahng their 
devotion to the great cause of the Lord Jesus 
Christ, and seemed to desire to let the heathen 
people about them know that they were not 
ashamed of Christ nor His Gospel. It was a pe- 
culiar experience to us, and one we always will re- 
member. When we entered Hing Hua we were 
saluted by the pupils of the two schools v/ith joy- 
ful acclamations, hearty salutations, and earnest 
singing of hymns, and the explosion of fire- 
crackers. 

"At this session the Hing Hua Mission Con- 
ference was organized by the authority of the 
General Conference. 

"The only missionaries we have in that field 
are W. N. Brewster, superintendent, Franklin Oh- 
linger, and T. B. Owen. This Conference was 
originally a part of the territory of the old Foo- 
chow Conference. The missionaries had been dili- 
gent and successful, and the new Conference was 
organized with something over five thousand mem- 
bers and probationers. They had not only been 
drilled in the doctrines of the Gospel, so as to 
enjoy a clear Christian experience, but they had 
also been drilled in regard to Church organization, 
and also in giving, so that their collections were a 
rema.rkable showing of consecration of their means, 
although the people, as is well known, in all parts 
of China are very poor. The session was a very 
happy one, and the utmost harmony prevailed. 
The session seemed to be permeated to the utmost 
with the spirit of brotherly kindness and devo- 
tion to the cause of Christ. The native Christians 
for miles around came in to the services on the 



Missionary Tours Through Asia. 167 



Sabbath, and our new church, that will seat eight 
hundred people, was more than filled, many people 
having to stand about the doors. On Sunday 
afternoon I baptized thirty-seven children, all of 
them of Christian parentage. 



"The visit to Hing Hua completes the tour of 
all the Conferences in Eastern Asia except West 
China. Therefore we turn our faces to the direc- 
tion of that distant field. We return to Foochow 
the same way that we came to Hing Hua. We 
are conveyed in chairs until we reach our boats, 
and then go up the Min River in our mission boat. 
No bishop, until I went to West China, had ever 
visited that distant field. Not because they did 
not want to go, but because conditions were not 
favorable for them to go when they were in the 
field. It was my good fortune to have the oppor- 
tunity to go, and I availed myself of it. We go 
from Foochow to Shanghai, and in Shanghai we 
made our preparations to go up the Yangtsze 
River on our way to West China. The steamers 
on the Yangtsze River are very good, and as a 
whole furnish every required comfort and conveni- 
ence. We went from Shanghai to Hankow on one 
of these steamers. At tliis latter place we trans- 
ferred to a smaller steamer, which took us to 
Ichang. From Shanghai to Hankow the distance 
is six hundred miles, and from Hankow to Ichang 
the distance is four hundred miles. Ichang is the 
end of steam navigation going up the river. We 
were delayed at Hankow ten days waiting for the 
smaller steamer to take us to Ichang. So while 



168 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



waiting in Hankow I had the privilege of visiting 
the work of our Wesleyan brethren in Hankow 
and in the cities on the opposite side of the river, 
and was greatly pleased with all I saw. I also 
had the privilege of visiting the station of the 
China Inland Mission, and also the work, hospital 
and evangelistic, of the London Missionary Soci- 
ety, I had the privilege of lecturing for the 
Young Men's Christian Association and preaching 
three times for the London Missionary brethren. 
I visited the hospital of the London Mission and 
the hospital of the Wesleyan Society. Li every- 
thing I saw of the work of both societies I was 
greatly pleased. 

"When I reached Ichang we found Rev. Q. A. 
Meyers and wife, of our Chung King Mission, who 
had come down the river to accompany us from 
Ichang to Chung King. He had hired a house 
boat for us and engaged the men, forty in num- 
ber, to pull us up the river. A house boat is 
hired just as a house is rented, empty. You put 
in your own provisions and your own furniture, 
hire your servants, and have general supervision 
for the time you have it, just the same as if it 
were your own property. At Shanghai, knowing 
that I would have to furnish my own provisions, 
I laid in a comfortable share of supplies, such as 
American flour, American cornmeal, American 
meat, Boston baked beans put up in cans, and 
other articles that it was supposed we would need 
on our trip. When I reached Ichang, I found 
that Brother Myers also had laid in something of 
a supply. There were other missionaries of other 
missions wanting to go up the river with us, so a 



Missionary Tours Through Asia. 



169 



second boat was hired and some forty men also 
to pull them up the river. Dr. and Mrs. Woolsey, 
whom the Board was sending out as medical mis- 
sionaries for West China, were in our company, 
and we had a doctor going out to West China to 
work for the London Missionary Society, and a 
Baptist brother and his wife also going into that 
field. We divided our company, myself and wife 
and Brother Myers and wife in one boat, Dr. 
Woolsey and wife and the London physician and 
Mr. Upcraft and wife, of the Baptist Mission, in 
the other boat. Having laid in our supplies both 
of food and furniture we were soon ready to start, 
but no matter in how much hurry one may be, it 
takes just so much time — so much talk, talk, talk, 
for a Chinaman to get ready to start. It does no 
good to worry, it does n't help a particle to make 
a fuss, just be patient. They will start after 
while. From Ichang to Chung King the distance 
is five hundred miles. When the winds were favor- 
able we put up the sails and traveled with a fair 
degree of speed; when the winds are contrary, 
then the men have to pull. This is called track- 
ing. A large rope made of bamboo is made fast 
to the boat and the other end of it is put ashore, 
and the forty men get hold of it and then patiently 
tramp, tramp, tramp. At intervals they divide 
and a number come on the boat to get their rice, 
and after them the others come and eat and rest. 
At night we tied up. When we came to rapids, 
and there were many of them, we usually had to 
pull ashore below the rapids, and we all clamored 
out and walked around. Then above the rapids 
we had the privilege of watching the men pull 



170 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce, 



the boat through the noisj'^, tumbling water. At 
most of these rapids we had to hire an increased 
number of men. In one instance we hired one 
hundred additional men. At one that was called 
^New Rapids/ having been made by a recent land- 
slide, we hired an additional force of two hundred 
men. The boy that waited on the table and the 
one that did the cooking for us were Christians. 
We had prayers in the evening in English, and in 
the morning in Chinese. Brother Myers conducted 
the prayers in Chinese, the Chinese servants taking 
their part from time to time as requested. We 
had services on Sunday, and the people about the 
place where we tied up came down, of course, to 
see and hear. 

^'The scenery along the Upper Yangtsze re- 
minds one at times of some of the scenery in Colo- 
rado. Three or four of the gorges are very fine. 
We have no missionary work on the Yangtsze 
River from Kiukiang to Chung King, a distance 
of one thousand miles or more. 

"We were twenty-seven days making the dis- 
tance of five hundred miles in this houseboat. The 
brethren of Chung King heard at one time that I 
was not to visit them, that the trip was so long 
and accom^panied with so much supposed danger, 
that I had conc^ ^ded not to go. But when the 
word reached th-^ a that I was certainly coming, 
they, judging about the time I would likely to 
reach there, started down the river in our mission 
boat and met us a few miles below the city. Such 
a welcome as they gave us! So full of joy, so full 
of heartiness, so full of earnest expressions of 



Missionary Tours Through Asia, 



in 



thankfulness, that I was paid more than a thou- 
sand times for making the trip. 

"We reached Chung King the middle of the 
afternoon of February 1, 1897. The city has 
between two hundred and fifty and three hundred 
thousand people. We are well situated here. We 
have good property and we are doing good work. 
It was necessary that I go to Chentu, the capital 
of the province, before the annual meeting of the 
West China Mission should convene. There are 
two routes by which I could go. I could get a 
smaller boat and go on up the river, which would 
be five hundred miles further; or I could go by a 
route they call the ^Little Road' and be carried in 
a chair, and this route was three hundred miles. 
I chose to go in the chair. They secured four stal- 
wart Chinamen to carry me. Dr. McCartney, in 
charge of our hospital in Chung King, went with 
me as my guide and interpreter. We had men 
with us to carry our beds and food, and a man 
to cook. Another man to take care of the doctor's 
horse. It seemed a long journey to be carried 
three hundred miles in a chair. I felt, however, 
that it was my duty to go, and with that sense of 
obligation upon me I did not give the difficulties 
of the journey any special consideration. On our 
journey we stopped over night in Chinese inns. 
Our cook prepared our food. When the evening 
meal was over and we were ready for sleep, we 
had our prayers. Dr. McCartney usually con- 
ducted the same. Sometimes our cook would lead 
the devotions, and once in awhile another member 
of the party would conduct the services. We arose 



172 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce, 



earl}" in the morning, and our cook would go for- 
ward and select a, place some six or eight miles 
ahead and have breakfast for us when we came 
up. The rest of the party would come after us, 
bringing the beds. Half way to Chentu is the city 
of Sui Ling, and here we spent Sunday, We had 
a private service early Sunday morning in our 
little chapel. Dr. McCartne}^ preached, and then 
through him as an interpreter I led class. There 
were twenty-four persons present, and I led it in 
the old-fashioned Methodist manner, each one giv- 
ing his or her experience. I asked them to tell 
me how it was they became Christians, and what 
led them first to think of Christ and give their 
hearts to Him. They assigned various reasons, 
all of which I have noted down. After this meet- 
ing we threw open the doors of our chapel, and a 
great crowd came in. I preached. Dr. McCartney 
preached, and then our native pastors preached. 
We then went back to our Cliinese inn, cooked our 
dinner, and then went out to one of the largest 
heathen temples in the city. A great crowd fol- 
lowed us everywhere. After we had looked through 
the temple, we went into the open court of it and 
held a Gospel service. We sang hymns, we read 
the Scripture, we prayed and preached. The great 
crowd steadily increased. All was quiet and Yery 
orderly, and not a single word or act was said 
or done to show us disrespect. Even the Buddhist 
priests treated us with kindly consideration, bring- 
ing me a chair that I might sit while the other 
brethren were conducting the services. In the even- 
ing several of the native Christians came to our 
Chinese inn, and the Scriptures were read and I 



Missionary Tours Through Asia, 173 



said a few words to them. Dr. McCartney also 
talked and prayed with them. After dismissing 
them we went to our beds, thankful to God that 
we had had an opportunity of doing a little good 
for our blessed Savior that day. 

"Next morning we started early, and in due 
time reached Chentu, making the distance from 
Chung King to Chentu, three hundred miles, in 
ten days. Chentu is the capital of Szechuen Prov- 
ince, and is a city of five hundred thousand people. 
Here is where the riots occurred in May, 1895. 
The rioters destroyed our property and the prop- 
erty of other missions as well, but the Chinese Gov- 
ernment was called on by our Government to make 
good the loss of property, which was done. When 
I reached there two houses had been rebuilt, and a 
neat new church and a school building, and per- 
haps some others which I do not now recall. 

"I was in Chentu several days, and had the 
pleasure of dedicating our new church, baptizing 
several native converts, preaching and talking upon 
several occasions, and twice conducting services 
for all the missionaries of the several missions in 
Chentu. 

"The day I dedicated the new church we had 
in the audience a native of Thibet, a Lama priest. 
I had sent for him, that I might have an interview 
with him. After I got through with the interview, 
I invited him to stay and witness the service of 
dedication. He did so, and manifested great in- 
terest in what he saw and heard. I asked him 
if they would allow us to come into Thibet. He 
said no, they did not want any Christian mission- 
aries in their country, and insisted they would not 



174 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



allow it. When I was in India, however, I had 
great joy in learning that some of Bishop Tho- 
burn's women missionaries, I believe, had gone into 
Thibet from the other side of the great field and 
had organized Bible and other work, and were 
quietly pushing the work of Christ without this 
Lama priest knowing that such a thing was going 
on in his country. 

"After remaining in Chentu for several days, 
I returned by way of the river in a small boat in 
company with Dr. McCartney and Dr. Canright. 
The distance by river is five hundred miles, and 
we made it with comfort and safety. When we 
had gone two hundred and fifty miles we met our 
own mission boat, which had been sent up to meet 
us, and we dismissed our little boat and got into 
our mission boat, and with more comfortable travel- 
ing sailed down the river, stopping at various 
places where our missionaries were at work. 

"The annual session of the Mission was, of 
course, full of interest to me, and it was so also 
to the missionaries and native Christians, as it was 
the first time a bishop had ever presided at their 
annual meeting. We continued in session five days, 
and the Lord wonderfully blessed us. We did our 
work carefully, looking after every interest of the 
Mission. People were converted, and Sunday was 
a day of unusual victory, results beginning to tell 
immediately in various ways. From time to time 
I have heard of the pushing out into new fields 
by our laborers and the winning of new victories. 



"The prospect of success in this West China 
work was never so inviting and promising as now. 



Missionary Tours Through Asia. 



175 



The Szechuen Province, in which Chentu and 
Chung King are located, has forty millions of 
people, all speaking one dialect. It has one hun- 
dred and fifty-two walled cities, and it has seven 
large cities between Chung King and Chentu, on 
what is called the ^Great Road,' in which there has 
never been a missionary stationed or doing any 
work until our Brothers Peat and Cady entered 
one or two of them. All the missionaries of all 
the missions, all told, in West China when I was 
there numbered only one hundred and fifty. This 
for forty-five millions of people. Chentu is almost 
opposite New York on the other side of the globe. 
From Shanghai to Chentu, going all the way by 
water, is a distance of two thousand miles, one 
thousand by steam, the other thousand by house- 
boat. You will note that I went the thousand miles 
by steam, then five hundred miles by houseboat, 
and then three hundred miles in a chair. So I 
went, going up, eighteen hundred miles. Going 
back all the way by water, it was two thousand 
miles, making a total of thirty-eight hundred miles. 

"Mrs. Joyce accompanied me everywhere, ex- 
cept on the long chair ride from Chung King to 
Chentu. She remained in Chung King with our 
good missionaries while I made that journey. 
While I was in Chung King I had the privilege 
of holding services for all the missionaries of all 
the societies doing work in that city and vicinity. 
One of the most precious services I have ever at- 
tended in my life was on Sunday afternoon, when 
there were forty-two missionaries present in the 
parlor of a Quaker missionary. The persons pres- 
ent were from America, England, Scotland, 



176 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce, 



Sweden, and Germany. I do not think I over- 
state the fact, when I say that every soul present 
during that hour somehow felt tha,t the Lord of 
the vineyard, the great Head of the Church, was 
present and did wonderfully bless His servants. 
It was an hour filled with precious influences to 
my own soul, and an hour the memory of which 
I shall carry with me forever. I feel sure that all 
who were present that day, if they could speak 
in these lines tliis moment, would utter in substance 
what I have just said. 

'^The annual meeting over, myself and wife 
and the mother of the American consul in Chung 
King started down the river in a small houseboat 
for Ichang. The wind was contrary a great part 
of the way. Our boat was not very heavily loaded, 
and it tossed about quite vigorously, and sometimes 
seemed to be dangerously doing so. We felt, 
however, that we were always in the hands of Him 
who said, 'I will never leave you nor forsake you.' 
The current is very swift, and instead of pulling 
the boat by ropes, as we had done going up the 
river, the men simply had to direct it by rudder 
and oar. In ten days we made the distance of five 
hundred miles, tying up every night. By this 
you will see that we made fifty miles a day, so 
the current must have been remarkably swift. 

"Reaching Ichang we had to wait two or three 
days for a boat to take us down to Shanghai. 
Tliis stay including a Sunday, I attended a sev\- 
ice in a native congregation where the Scotch 
Presbj'terians were at work, and was benefited 
gTeatly by the service. In the afternoon I 
preached to the English-speaking people, and was 



Missionary Tours Through Asia, 



177 



greatly pleased to meet so many in that far-ofF 
part of the world who remembered God, His Word, 
and His service. 

"In due time we reached Shanghai, arriving 
there on the 15th of April, making just four 
months to a day since we left Shanghai for West 
China. After resting a few days we left for 
Korea, to begin my second round. In all my jour- 
neys, from the time I left America until I re- 
turned to it, I was on thirty-five ocean and river 
steamers, five of them twice, making forty jour- 
neys on the steamers. I traveled in all Eastern 
Asia during my work twenty-two thousand miles. 
I preached wherever I had opportunity, conducted 
services of various kinds, such as revival, Bible 
readings, prayer-meetings, etc., wherever occasion 
offered. I also lectured a number of times. 
Neither my wife nor myself was sick a single day 
while we were gone, except such ailings as come 
from colds, from which my wife suffered a few 
days in Hankow. The two years I was in this 
wonderful field are among the happiest years of 
my life. 



"I would rather live in Shanghai than any 
other city of which I have any knowledge. Not 
because I could have every comfort there, not be- 
cause of the m.any conveniences that I might have 
about me, but because of the good I could do in 
mission work. It is also the great commercial cen- 
ter of Eastern Asia, what New York is comm.er- 
cially and otherwise to the United States. In my 
judgment we ought to ha.ve an episcopal residence 
12 



178 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



in that city. We ought also to have a printing- 
press and a Methodist Book Concern there. We 
ought to have a business agent there to transact all 
our business for all our missions in China. Our 
printing-press could print our theological books, 
our hymn books, and all other kinds of literature 
that we would need for the work of missions. We 
could also have one paper for all our missions in 
the Empire. We have such a paper now, designed 
for this purpose and published at Foochow, but 
Shanghai is the commercial center of all China. 
Our press and Book Concern are doing remarkably 
good work at Foochow, but they could do still 
more and greater work if they were located at 
Shanghai. 



"When I finished my work in China, instead of 
returning home by way of Vancouver and San 
Francisco, we came on around the world by way 
of Malaysia, India, Palestine, Italy, and England, 
and landed in New York the 2d day of April, 
1898, having journeyed in all forty-one thousand 
miles, and by God's blessing kept in health and 
strength, both my wife and myself, throughout all 
our long journey." 



CHAPTER XIV. 



Bishop Joyce and the Epwohth League. 

IN the year 1900 Bishop Joyce was elected 
by his colleagues on the Board of Bishops 
President of the Epworth League of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church for the quadrennium 
beginning at the close of the General Conference 
of that year. 

It was an appointment in harmony with his 
tastes and gifts. His strong sympathies with 
youth, his buoyant and optimistic spirit, and his 
deep spiritual experience, altogether fitted him 
peculiarly to become the leader of the young life 
of the Church. The saintly and catholic-spirited 
Bishop Ninde had preceded him in the office. 

After receiving his notification of this added 
responsibility he went to the office of the editor 
of the Epworth Herald in Chicago — where the 
General Conference was held — and they spent two 
hours in prayer and counsel together concerning 
the needs of the young people of Methodism. 

From that time on the welfare of the young 
people of the Church was his peculiar care. He 

179 



180 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



advised with and inspired their leaders. He ad- 
dressed their conventions. He exhorted the young 
people to high ideals and attainments in Christian 
experience. He urged them to be true to the 
Church's standard concerning worldly amusements. 
He pressed on their attention the lofty claims of 
foreign missionary service. And he led hundreds 
upon hundreds of them into that spiritual baptism 
which had so comforted his own soul and re-en- 
forced his ministry. And in the International Ep- 
worth League Convention at San Francisco, in 
1901 5 he preached to an audience of nearly ten 
thousand Epworthians a sermon of marvelous 
power, holding the vast audience spellbound for 
an hour and a quarter, and lifting them to trans- 
figuration heights. 

The following is an appeal to the young life 
of the Church for revival effort, made while he 
was President of the League through the columns 
of the Epworth Herald: 

"The Coming Revival,, 
''What Kind of One Shall it Be? 
"The Church is praying for a revival. God is 
answering prayer. The presence of the Holy 
Spirit is among the people. The Churches are 
taking on new strength. The Conferences are 
making encouraging reports. There is a very 
general opinion that we are on the eve of a great 
spiritual awakening. A revival is at hand. What 



Bishop Joyce and the Epworth League. 181 



kind shall it be? It is so much easier to depend 
on the seen than it is upon the unseen, upon the 
human rather than the Divine, that we may thereby 
be led to forget the important truth that it is 
not by the wisdom of human might, nor by the 
skill of human power, but it is by the agency of 
the Holy Spirit, that men's consciences are reached 
and awakened, and their minds enlightened and 
persuaded, and their wills influenced and surren- 
dered, and their sins pardoned and their souls 
saved. 

"It is therefore a Scriptural revival we need 
and are praying for. And such a revival is clearly 
provided for in the Word of God. Pentecost was 
such a revival. Read Joel ii, 1, and ii, 27, 28, 
29, 32. We must take into account the fact that 
God is always ready to give to His Church the 
revival with its attendant blessings. The view 
that would limit Him to set times as the only 
seasons when He can or will revive His people, 
is not in harmony with the teachings of the Holy 
Scriptures on the subject. Nor is the same in 
keeping with the records of revivals in the history 
of the Church of God. 

"Methodism at its best believes, and therefore 
teaches, that God will give the revival and its 
blessings to longing and prayerful souls anywhere, 
everywhere, and any time and all the time. If 
we will give the references in Joel, and also in all 
other parts of God's Word, referring to this sub- 
ject a careful reading, depending upon the Holy 
Spirit to open the Word to our understanding, 
we shall see this truth in so clear a light, as to be 
satisfied ever after, not only with its correctness, 



182 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



but also with its fullness and richness and glory. 
God is always ready to bestow upon His servants 
and His Church His very best spiritual blessings. 
The leader called of God to blow the trumpet in 
Zion must be taught of God by the Spirit. Such 
a leader will possess the mind and patience of 
Jesus, and be ruled by the spirit of compassion. 
(Matt, ix, 36.) Joel ii, 17, makes humiliation 
and fervent prayer absolute necessities on the part 
of God's ministers. The right study of Revelation 
iii, 15, 16j will lead to self examination, repentance, 
and confession, and soon the spirit of the New 
Testament tenderness, and loving compassion, and 
the fullness of spiritual blessing, will fill the soul, 
and direct the life. These experiences and their 
effects are to go beyond the ministers. Joel ii, 1, 
says, "Let all the inhabtants of the land tremble, 
for the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh 
at hand." Li Acts ii, 1, we read, "And when the 
day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with 
one accord in one place." We are not to suppose 
that an overwhelming majority of the Church will 
at once be ready to join such a company, for such 
purpose and such results; but, thank God! there 
are those of God's people who carry a burden of 
soul for the success of Christ's kingdom, and for 
the victories of His righteousness, and there are 
those who lead the way in these days of intense 
interest, and their faith, prayers, and victories are 
bringing many to their side to join them in this 
growing and widening work. There may be those 
who speak against the few who groan and weep in 
soul over the spiritual dearth abroad in the land, 
but such persons show thereby, however, that they^ 



Bishop Joyce and the Epworth League. 183 



themselves are ignorant of the Scriptural condi- 
tions of a revival of religion. 

"Such people frustrate the grace of God. This 
condition of revival success is not to be secured 
by hunting for Achans in the camp, or railing at 
the people. He who rushes into the burning build- 
ing to save its occupants has neither time nor 
heart to abuse the sleeping inmates; there is no 
scold in the man who is alarmed, and horrified at 
sin and its consequences. When such a man gets 
desperately in earnest, the lukewarm, the indiffer- 
ent, and the heedless misunderstand him, and de- 
ride him and sometimes laugh him to scorn. 

"Whoever will give himself to the work of 
bringing sinners to Christ, must do so with a des- 
peration of purpose. This is essential. But be 
it known everywhere that such a state of mind 
and of heart can not be obtained by any methods 
of human training. The schools can neither teach 
it nor confer it. It can be obtained only from 
God. Through the personal, prayerful study of 
His Word and an absolute abandonment of self to 
God, and an unreserved dependence upon the Holy 
Spirit. This is neither rant, cant, nor wildfire. 
It will not always fit into formal molds, nor will 
it run in ice-bound ruts, nor will it be pleasing to 
people who are under the esthetic influence of a 
heartless and non-responsive formalism. But it 
will be pleasing to God, and wonderfully helpful 
to the Church of Jesus Christ, and make her a 
power in drawing men into the kingdom of love 
and grace. It will make a way for itself, and it 
will distribute its power effectively far and wide 
according to methods which the fathers of the 



184 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



Church understood, for they had it and conquered 
and triumphed under it. 

"Every minister and every layman throughout 
all Methodism ought to know that one of our rules 
for preachers says, 'Be ashamed of nothing but 
sin.' The same applies to laymen as well. I ap- 
peal to every Methodist to read paragraph 136, 
section 3. Also paragraphs 137 to 142 of the 
Discipline of the Church, and do this along with 
Joel ii, 1, 26, 27, 28, 29, 32, and Acts ii, 1-4, and 
also verses 12 to 21. 

"The Spirit-taught souls will see wondrous 
things in these truths, and will discover equip- 
ments of power for service that will mean revivals 
of religion according to Bible provision that will 
bring people in great multitudes to Christ for sal- 
vation from sin and for the fullest and richest 
blessings of His love. 

"Such a salvation movement is now at hand. 
It is at our doors. I rejoice and thank God that 
our Epworth League army has already entered 
into the work with a heroic faith that means vic- 
tory along the entire line; and already Christ, the 
Head of the Church, is giving them some glorious 
victories. I pray that this Army of j^oung people 
will continue to go steadily and praj^erfuUy for- 
ward to the movement of final victory and broadest 
triumph, and even more than the two millions of 
souls shall be won for Christ and for the best life 
in His service.'' 



CHAPTER XV. 



Decoration-day Address Delivered at Chat- 



HIS day is full of interest to us all. Mem- 



ories precious and tender are revived in 



many thousands of hearts throughout the 
land. The eyes grow dim, through gathering 
tears, as memory is busy with the scenes crowded 
into the years long gone by. Voices grow tremu- 
lous as the names of dear ones come to the lips; 
the* mental vision pierces through the shadows that 
gather over the years, and the forms of loved ones 
are seen walking again the familiar paths that 
lead up to the dear old home of the long ago. We 
join them in our affection, and hold converse with 
them once more in the intensely yearning love 
of our hearts. 

Men die, but their influence lives. Death brings 
them to the grave, but what they did in life tells 
the world the kind of men they were. 

Death deprives men of their wealth, but the 
work they wrought while living constitutes an 
imperishable monument that will, ages long, reveal 



TANOOGA, May 30, 1895. 




185 



186 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



what were the supreme, and therefore the ruling, 
purposes of their lives, and the motives which were 
the ground-work of their ambition. Men are ex- 
pressions of possibilities, of that which may be; 
they stand for influences, expressive of principles, 
the power of which is felt along the lines of hu- 
manity, and lie in the pathway of the centuries. 
Men of high-grade character, of exalted motives, 
governed by the law of self-sacrifice — these are 
the men who build great governments, create best 
civilization, and, if need be, are willing to die for 
the sake of a great principle, which will result in 
good to mankind. The works of such men follow 
them and influence generations of peoples, and 
shape institutions with the highest expression of 
the best power that ever comes to men out of the 
Divine fullness. Such men deserve the admiration 
and are entitled to the loving remembrance of 
mankind. 

God provides for the founding, the growth, 
and the career of nations ; they are the things that 
must be, they are the necessities in the education 
of men, and in the needed character-building of 
the generations of the human family, and in the 
development or unfolding of God's plans for men 
as the ages come on. 

We have a right to believe that this nation of 
ours is a child of Providence. The time and man- 



Decoration-Day Address. 



187 



ner of founding it, the struggles passed, the his- 
tory made, the work done, the influence achieved, 
the position won; these indicate some of the rea- 
sons why we have the right to believe, yea, why 
we are authorized to believe, this nation came into 
being because God willed it; and it lives, and has 
a future and a mission because He is over it, and 
wills the same: the pathway along which our na- 
tion has come is conspicuously marked by institu- 
tions, monuments, battle-fields, and heroes' resting- 
places. In the ranks of its people are the evi- 
dences of struggles which fade not away; they are 
broken semi-circles, crippled bodies, desolate hearts, 
burdened souls, care-worn faces, and tearful eyes. 

The nation lives because its countless thou- 
sands of manly men went to their graves for it by 
way of the weary march, the bloody fields of battle, 
the hospital, and the prison: but these men are 
not forgotten; a grateful republic lovingly en- 
shrines in the hearts of its people, as a sacred 
trust, the memory of its heroic defenders, and 
annually the surviving comrades of these hero dead 
come together, and with gentle hands cover the 
sleeping forms with flowers — Nature's best expres- 
sion of love. 

Bolingbroke said : "Neither Montaigne in writ- 
ing his essays, nor Descartes in building new 
worlds, nor Burnet in framing an antediluvian 



188 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



earth, nor Newton in discovering the true laws of 
nature, felt more intellectual joys than he feels 
who is a real patriot, who bends all the forces 
of his understanding, and directs all his thoughts 
and actions to the good of his country/' The most 
enlightened patriotism of all lands approves the 
statements of this gifted and far-seeing thinker 
and writer. 

From the spring of 1861 to the year 1865 
the great question with Americans was that of 
patriotic devotion to the principles of civil lib- 
erty in the republic as guaranteed by the Con- 
stitution of the nation. During that period of 
four years of war, more than one-half a million 
of men went to heroes' graves from the battle- 
field, the camp, and the hospital. But — patriot- 
ism came out of the awful struggle in triumph, 
and those who gave sturdy blows for the nation's 
honor, and who stood for the defense of freedom's 
flag came through the conflict — heroes — the equals 
of any men that ever in the history of mankind 
braved the dangers of war for the love and de- 
fense of a great principle. 

Every pure sentiment of the human heart says, 
"Let love's choicest gifts express a nation's deep- 
est affection for those who, as Montgomery would 
have it, 

" ' Went down like favorite children to hurtle in the lap 
of glory.' 



Decoration-Day Address. 



189 



Their names will recall multitudes of precious 
memories; thoughts of past scenes and loved ones 
will set to vibrating chords that will cause the eyes 
to overflow with tears. To die for a nation's honor 
is to go to a martyr's grave for the supremacy 
of a principle and the uplifting of the people; 
the result gives new life to the republic, and in- 
creases the greatness of the nation, and mankind 
is enriched by the influence of such consecrated 
devotion, and the higher nature of men is edu- 
cated, — disciplined — by the matchless, peerless 
power of such object lessons. 

Unselfish and far-reaching deeds take deep hold 
upon our hearts and our memories; we can not 
forget them; their influence makes us think better 
of our race; they give us a conviction of the 
power of righteousness, and faith in the final vic- 
tory of right over wrong, of truth over error; 
this is the mighty and the enduring link which 
unites and holds together the generations of men, 
and those who come after us will do as we are 
doing, they will honor the memory of the nation's 
defenders, and they will annually cover their graves 
with flowers, and children's children will be told 
the story of the sacrifices and of the dying of 
these patriotic martyrs. 

"Leonidas and his regiment of three hundred 
immortal and invincible Spartans died, more than 



190 



Life of Isaac Wilso7i Joyce. 



two thousand years ago, at Thermopylse, with their 
faces to the foe, but then- glorious achievement 
again and again through the centuries has nerved 
the arm of the patriot upon many a battle-field 
when measuring dangers and bravely meeting them 
against overwhelming foes." 

"So along down the way of the centuries — 
yea, it msij be along the pathway of the length- 
ened ages, men and youth will gather inspiration 
from the history of our conflicts, from the story 
of our battle-fields, from the deeds of our noble 
patriot dead, to nerve and to inspire and strengthen 
them for the conflicts which they may be called 
upon to take part in. 

"So long as there is an Antietam, a Gettys- 
burg, a Wilderness, a Vicksburg, a Chickamauga, 
a Lookout Mountain, a Richmond, and a March 
to the Sea, aye, so long as there is a soldier with 
an empty sleeve, or one that trudges along life's 
dusty way by aid of crutch or cane — because he 
left a leg on some bloody battle-field, — so long as 
there is the widow of a dead soldier, who wishes 
for the coming of her loved one, but he comes not 
again, so long as there may be the orphaned child 
of the hero dead, who in evening twilight sits and 
yearns for just one more look into father's face, 
although he knows it can not be, aye, so long a« 
this nation shall stand, let not loyal Americans 



Decoration-Day Address. 



191 



forget the men who for love of country willingly, 
cheerfully died, that the republic might continue 
to live and be a light and a blessing to all. 

Government — nationality — is a necessity with 
all people, and under the influence of the best, 
men rise to the purest and the wisest political influ- 
ence, to the highest mental development, as well 
as to the truest Christian character. Mind is al- 
ways stronger and better, the more closely and in- 
tensely it is applied in the labor of great think- 
ing, in the processes of trying to solve hard prob- 
lems; and the nation which is able, by the genius 
of its laws and the provisions of its constitution 
and under the leadership of wise men, to keep the 
brain of its people employed upon subjects of 
great practical value, will, in the sum total of 
results which go to make a people's history, become 
the wisest, the best, and the most influential nation. 

It will be able to discover and bring into use 
those virtues which lift a people to the heights 
of the best civilization. 

''For practical purposes, new application of old 
truths is equal to the discovery of new ones." 

Men have done well in building nations, in 
making civilizations. Man started with nothing, 
without a home, without village or city, an un- 
subdued earth, with but little knowledge of the 
world he was in. He stood facing a destiny, 



192 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



which he feared more than he understood. But 
look along the lines of history, and the centuries 
tell of the unf oldings of his powers and the results 
of his skill. Cities, states, nations, monuments, 
libraries, institutions, and civilization mark the way 
of his power in all lands and in all time. Take a 
survey of the status to-day ; he is this day more in 
himself, and more in the breadths and heights of 
his achievements, than at any former moment, hour, 
or century of his history. He is master to-day. 
He has solved the problems of earth and air and 
sky, he sails all seas, he ascends all rivers, he climbs 
all mountains, he explores all continents, he trav- 
erses all depths, he measures all heights, he studies 
all languages, he masters all laws, he examines all 
mysteries; his cities are marvels for greatness, in 
wealth, in influence, and in power; his inventions 
and his discoveries show that in the emxbodiment 
of his power and in the possibilities of his great- 
ness he stands a king, as one akin to the Divine. 
Behold him this day, as he stands in the results 
of his mighty and his far-reaching inventions, in 
the continent sweeping power of his combinations, 
in the thought lines of his genius that girdle the 
globe on which he lives. 

Surely he is, in view of this exhibited vastness 
of his power, entitled to a high place in the sweep 
of ages. Such a being must have a nation. He 



Decoration-Day Address. 193 



will, by the inherent power within him, build for 
the centuries, for it is a great manhood, present 
and possible, under Divine guidance and instruc- 
tion, on its way through the ages, facing hope- 
fully the steadily unfolding and endless future. 
It is just as essential that he build and possess 
a nation as it is that he have a house in which 
to live, a home for the shelter and protection of 
his family. And when the nation has for its foun- 
dation the principles of righteousness and justice, 
it is by that fact as worthy a subject of prayer 
and defense as is the home. 

Nations have problems to solve peculiar to the 
places they occupy in the centuries, and their geo- 
graphical location on the face of the earth. God 
works His plans to final and effective results 
through the agency of the nations; He has no 
more trouble to give a nation a mission, than He 
has in giving a single man a work to do. If 
either does anything worthy a name and a place 
in history, it is because there is a Divine wisdom 
that plans the work for both, and a Love infinite 
in its nearness and tenderness to inspire both for 
the same. 

The place and surroundings of our nation in- 
dicate that God has no merely ordinary work for 
it to do. We are in the best center for a great 
nation to be built, and in due time do a work 
13 



194 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



which will lead to a destiny greater than that ever 
yet reached by another. Our area of territory is 
greater than that of any country except Russia. 
"Two great oceans receive the waters and the 
commerce of the rivers which touch every part 
of our land, and in turn something from every 
part of the world is brought to our very doors.'^ 
Here is the place for a nation greater than any 
known to history, and results already achieved in- 
dicate its mission to be to work out a better des- 
tiny for humanity than has yet been reached. 

Here, if anj^where on the face of the earth, 
principles taught by the Lord Jesus Christ are 
to have a practical application in the solution of 
problems of government, and all other questions 
which can enter into the life and work of a nation. 
Here, if anj^where, is to be shown by practical il- 
lustrations how the welfare of men is secured, and 
how the rights of all men are guarded by the jus- 
tice and the great-heartedness of the nation's laws. 

If American history has a meaning of any- 
thing more than the mere record of events, or de- 
scription of battle-fields and their bloody scenes 
and the victories for the nation's flag, it is that 
after defending the unity of the nation, and then 
securing the same, there are other questions which 
have arisen and are now confronting us, and which 
by their nature can not be bowed out of the arena, 
and they refuse to be pushed aside. 



Decoration-Day Address. 



The influence of our brave dead is about us; 
the atmosphere of their devotion pervades our 
homes, and is felt through all the ranks of soci- 
ety and of commercial relations, and the voice 
which comes to us upon its currents is the voice 
of that Providence that speaks in events, and re- 
veals the trend of His will in the epochs that make 
history. 

God has lifted to the eyes of nations great 
principles. He commands men to study and apply 
them, to love them, to obey and build them into 
individual and into national organic life. They 
cover all life; obeying them is elevation, purity, 
and power; disobeying them, individual debase- 
ment and national degradation follow. 

"Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." 
"Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy 
God in vain.^' "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thy heart." "Thou shalt love thy neigh- 
bor as thyself." 

What would the record show covering these 
things.'^ Desecrations, blasphemies, and trans- 
gressions so abound that in places refinement and 
purity blush and hide their faces. 

Greed and selfishness and wrongly used power 
put forth their hands now and again with alarm- 
ing effect upon the less fortunate. Practices that 
lead men into wrong paths grow with a rapidity, 
and at an expense of brain and conscience and 



196 Life of Isaac Wilsoii Joyce. 



fortune that are truly prophetic of the widest dis- 
asters. 

These and other things which spring grave 
questions upon us constitute some of the problems 
which at this moment are confronting us as a 
people. We must meet the issues which they 
crowd upon us. 

Have we, as a people great in our nationality, 
enough moral courage and power to overcome all 
these evils of which I have spoken, and wliich carry 
in their expression so much of alarm? Can we 
break their influence and free ourselves from them? 
I believe I voice the convictions and the faith of 
right thinking men when I say we can, and that 
we will. We can alwaj^s depend upon the bedrock 
common sense, the courage and devotion of the 
American people, when we reach the last stages of 
a great crisis in our national condition. They 
have never failed us yet in our liistory, they have 
ever been true at the emergent moment of every 
great emergency. I dare believe they will be in 
all the coming years in the life of this republic. 

Since the year 1865 the elements of a new civ- 
ilization have been gradually manifesting their 
presence and making known their influence among 
the people of this nation, and these elements are 
persistently pushing themselves into every part of 
the land, and they are felt in every abode of man, 



Decoration-Day Address, 



197 



from lakes to Gulf, from Atlantic Ocean to Pa- 
cific waters. Every hut, cabin abode, and home 
of wealth experiences something this day of their 
uplifting inspiration. 

Childhood is wiser, manhood is stronger, and 
old age is happier. 

A spirit, as if out of the open heavens, has 
come down among the people, and they have been 
inspired and by it lifted up and carried forward 
at such a rate that it is not easy for us to esti- 
mate the progress we have as a nation made since 
1865, nor the rate we are making to-day at which 
we are going forward. 

The material activity everywhere manifest, is 
a showing of the presence of intellectual giants 
abroad in the land. A thoughtful writer says, 
"We have railroad lines sufBcient in number to 
reach almost seven times around the earth." Their 
annual earnings reach up into the hundreds of mil- 
lions of dollars. 

The telegraph companies of the country are 
operating wires enough to reach around the globe 
thirty times. 

"We have telephone wires now in use of suffi- 
cient length to reach eight times around the earth." 

We are in contact with the heart-beats and 
brain-throbs of the peoples of all the islands and 
all the continents upon the face of this earth. 



198 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



The activities are equally great on the moral 
side of this nineteenth-century life. The great 
universities and colleges are crowded with the 
young manhood and the young womanhood — the 
great young life — of this nation. The institutions 
of learning of all grades are too limited in ac- 
commodations to receive the multitudes of Amer- 
ica's children that crowd their way to their doors 
asking for that training to fit them for the scenes, 
and the labors, the responsibilities and the crises 
that await them as citizens in this great republic. 

The Churches have in their pulpits men, many 
of whom have received the best intellectual train- 
ing possible for men to receive, and they are using 
that disciplined and consecrated ability to go into 
every grade of society, and out of their love for 
humanity and their love to God persuade the 
humblest and the most obscure life to look upward 
and God-ward. 

The Sunday-school army numbers millions of 
children passing under the magic touch of Holy 
Scripture communicated by lips from hearts in 
touch with the Christ. 

The Christian press is in the front line with 
cultured brain, high purpose, and a holy passion 
to give the most inspiring truths to every home 
in our land. 

The closing years of the century throb with 



Decoration-Day Address, 



the high purposes of the best men and women of 
the age. 

The best womanly character known to history 
is, in these days of mighty movements, devoting 
itself to lifting up the fallen, helping the needy, 
instructing the ignorant, persuading the wayward 
to come home to the Heavenly Father. She is 
this hour heaven's messenger to carry hope and 
good cheer everywhere. But great as all this is, 
the hour rings with calls for men of yet greater 
moral courage and power to go into the arena, 
and do a work that cries to heaven for relief. 

By the hundred thousands men gave them- 
selves to the defense of the dear old flag and to 
save the nation from dismemberment and ruin. 
Without a moment's hesitation they went to scenes 
of carnage and stood amid shot and shell and flame, 
and fought and won for freedom. 

But the battle-fields of the republic, the graves 
where sleep our honored dead, in addition to flag, 
and union, and liberty, and nation mean also jus- 
tice, righteousness, the Golden Rule, and all the 
virtues taught in the Holy Book; these are some 
of the momentous questions that followed in the 
wake of the hour when in 1865 our dear old flag — 
the Stars and Stripes — ^went once more to the top 
of the mast o'er all this land, never to come down 
again. These are the problems we have to solve. 



200 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



These are the battles we must fight. Chickamauga 
— Gettysburg — Richmond- — ^the Wilderness — the 
March to the Sea meant courage — blood — death; 
but these other problems that follow in the wake 
of bloody fields are the most tug and tussle con- 
flict — battle of thought with thought, brain with 
brain, heart with heart, pen with pen, dollar with 
dollar; the field covers the nation; the enemies' 
hiding-places are in the hearts, brains, homes of 
the people. These enemies are in saloons, the 
gaming places, in poison-dripping literature — and 
in the spirits of hate, deception, jealousy and envy. 
These constitute the battle of this day; have we 
the courage to march into the heart of the conflict, 
and with manly words, brave deeds, and with 
Christly spirit do and dare the best we can to 
bring the kingdom of God to earth, and establish 
it, with its love, peace, joy, purity, in the hearts 
and homes of the peoples of our land.^^ This is not 
an hour's nor a day's conflict. 

O men of a hundred battle-fields, where you 
stood so grandly for the Stars and Stripes, will 
you not, as you have helped save the nation from 
civil disruption, will you not help to save it from 
evils which now imperil its peace and its prosperity, 
which threaten its moral purity and its stability, 
which menace its homes, its character, its every in- 
terest which a brave patriot and a devout Chris- 
tian loves so devoutly 



Decoration-Day Address. 



201 



Grand Army of the Republic — noble men — 
well nigh a million strong, the voice that called 
you in the days of your young manhood to follow 
the flag of your country, to fight its battles and 
win its victories, that same blessed voice this day 
calls you to wage a ceaseless warfare in the name 
of the Holy One against every evil and form of 
wrong which threaten the best good of our nation. 
There is no question about the outcome; victory 
will come, and the victors will have again God's 
blessing and heaven's reward; for more than these 
Gabriel would not ask. 

We ought to do these things for our own 
nation's sake and its security, and for the sake of 
nations about us, for the eyes of all peoples of all 
nations are turned this way, and they have a feel- 
ing that humanity has an interest in this land 
of ours. 

The greatness of the interests committed to 
the keeping of this free nation is sufficient reason 
for the massing of the great moral forces of the 
land, to hold the nation in the strength of God's 
favor for the triumphs of righteousness. Ac- 
knowledgment of God is the strength of a nation, 
and the practice of His precepts is the salvation 
of governments. The people that in their prin- 
ciples and elements of nationality are the nearest 
God's idea of things are on their way to the great- 



202 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



est victories possible to be won, and the hands on 
their dial plates will never go backward. 

"France tried for a time to get along without 
God, but Napoleon, for the good of the State, 
restored religion to the people." "When the Prime 
Minister of Louis Philippe was dying, he said, 
Trance must have religion.' " 

So must every nation, no matter what the 
form of government. 

Our Ship of State has sailed some stormy seas, 
but in the darkest hour, when we cried unto Him, 
we found Him guiding us through the darkness 
and the storm. And so long as we are true to 
Him, He will continue to shape our course, and 
take us safely unto the desired haven. 

I have an abiding conviction that this country 
of ours, more than any other, represents much 
of the future of mankind, and one of my strongest 
reasons for my belief is, we can do more for the 
man — ^the individual here, than can be done for 
him in any other part of the world. He can get 
more here than in any other nation. Matthew 
Arnold says, "America holds the future.'' 

Even with all the obstacles in our way, and 
the difficulties which beset us, we can at this hour 
show the best average citizen character to be found 
in any country. 

Some one has said, "Let us remember we speak 



Decoration-Day Address. 



203 



the language of great ideas, hence the language 
of the future.'' 

"It makes a great difference what language 
a people speaks, what songs they sing, what re- 
ligion they have." A thoughtful writer says, "A 
nation that speaks the language of Shakespeare 
and of Milton can never be ground under the heel 
of a tyrant." 

Let us also remember, the people who read 
the Bible, think its thoughts, imbibe its spirit, ex- 
perience its religion, practice its precepts, live in 
its atmosphere, and cling to God, its Author, can 
never be conquered by any power on earth, nor 
overthrown by any sort of influence known among 
men. 

Under some such power as this we have come 
out of every ordeal through which we have passed, 
and we look back now to the dark days from 1861 
to 1865, and without any hesitation whatever say, 
"God brought us through." No other power 
could have delivered us. Victory came on His 
plan, and at the last union and peace were restored 
throughout the land; we thank God for it, and 
devoutly pray they may abide forever. The con- 
flict was the struggle of giants. The contest was 
the mightiest onset of opposing armies, made up 
of the best blood and brains and muscle and char- 
acter that ever entered into battle over a great 



204 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce, 



principle in the life of a nation. The American 
soldier stands forth to-day in the record he has 
made, the peer of any soldier of any land or nation. 

But the price we paid for the unity and the 
peace of the nation was hundreds of thousands 
of lives, and these services can only be a feeble 
expression of our appreciation of, and our love 
for the honored dead, and for what they accom- 
plished for us. We owe them a debt we can never 
fully pay. Their dying was the price of blessings 
which enrich us this day, and it is our duty to 
make the story of their sacrifice a source of per- 
petual benediction to the nation and to the world. 

No graves were ever more eloquent than these 
graves of our heroes. They speak to us of cour- 
age, of duty, of the grandeur of a great mission. 

They who live to great purpose always fill a 
larger sphere than the local circle of their indi- 
vidual lives. 

You may have stood in a plain hall, and read 
the news of the men who thought out and uttered 
the proclamation of American independence; per- 
sonally not one of them did you know, but in their 
deeds they are immortal and known to all the 
world. So with these hero brothers of ours, whose 
deeds and memory we love to cherish because they 
gave their lives for the defense of the principles 
uttered in the declaration of American independ- 
ence. A new generation has come upon the stage 



Decoration-Day Address. 



205 



since they fellj and the time will come when not 
one will be living who took part in the conflict of 
arms, nor will one remain who knew any one of 
these men, but what these heroes did, in the sacri- 
fice they made, in the results they achieved, has 
passed into history to be read by succeeding gener- 
ations, and this nation will stand as a monument 
to their memory. In every national cemetery in 
the land will be found on many a headstone the 
word "Unknown but whether known or unknown, 
the American people will always remember their 
deeds of valor, nor will they ever cease to cherish 
their memory, and they will live in song — in his- 
tory — in monuments — in great institutions, and in 
this mighty republic that has a mission to lead 
the world in the greatest enterprises that charac- 
terize a people for the moral and intellectual wel- 
fare of mankind. 

Annually during all the coming years these 
services will be held, and gifts of flowers from lov- 
ing hearts will be strewn by gentle hands o'er the 
mounds where sleep the nation's honored dead. 
Our government honors itself in the beautiful and 
tender way it makes provision for the care of its 
hero dead. No other nation has done so much as 
ours has done to show its appreciation of and love 
for the men who gave their lives for the nation's 
life. All honor to the brain and heart of this 
great republic for the loving care it shows for its 



206 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



yet living defenders, and for the love and honor 
it bestows on the memory of those who braved 
everything and died for the nation's life, unity, 
and perpetuity. 

To this sacred place we come this day to honor 
the memory of our nation's dead, and with a loyal 
poet say: 

Cover them over — the brave and the true ; 

Cover them over — the Boys of the Blue ; 

Husband and brother, father and lover, 

Cover them over, cover them over : 

Cover them over — the brave and the true, 
Cover them over — our Boys of the Blue. 

Cover them over with silence and weeping, 
Cover the dust that lies here in our keeping ; 
Graves of the youthful and graves of the old, 
Cover with flowers of crimson and gold : 

Cover them over— the brave and the true, 
Cover them over — our Boys of the Blue. 

Cover them over with fragrance and beauty, 
Cover the hushed hearts that shrank not from duty ; 
Men of the battle-field ghastly and gory. 
Cover them over — these men in their glory. 
Cover them over — the brave and the true, 
Cover them over — our army of blue. 

Men of a nation in darkness and danger, 
Sick, bleeding, dying, in land of the stranger, 
Our fond hearts shall cherish a love that is true, 
For all who gave life for the Eed, White, and Blue. 
And long as that banner shall symbol our pride, 
We '11 garland the graves of our heroes that died. 



Decoration-Day Address. 207 



O men of the nation I O men of the blue ! 
Out from the heart comes a requiem for you, 
From hilltop and valley, from prairie and sea. 
The shout of the millions: One nation are we! 
No more may war^s reveille open the day, 
But peace wreathes her chaplet forever and aye. 

Peace ! peace to your ashes, O men of the Blue ! 

Over each mound falls our love like the dew: 

Eound you we gather to-day in our pride, ; 

With honor to all who for country have died. 
Sleep ! sleep ! till the waking calls to arise. 
And join with the army of blue in the skies. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



His Religious Experience. 

THE conversion of Bishop Joyce has been 
described in a previous chapter. Some- 
thing of the depth and genuineness of his 
rehgious Hfe has been inferred from the narrative 
of his labors and utterances. But so important 
a part did personal religious experience have in 
his success as a pastor and bishop, and so marked 
was the experimental emphasis in his preaching, 
as that the subject merits distinct treatment. 

The great fundamental of his religious life 
was his conversion. So clear and definite was that 
experience that he never doubted it. He loved to 
refer to it. Undoubtedly it was responsible for 
the definiteness and confidence with which he ap- 
pealed to men for immediate decision for Christ. 
It colored all his thinking and feeling. And the 
conversion of men was the major emphasis of his 
preaching and effort up to the very end. 

With him, as with every obedient child of God, 
numberless blessings and times of refreshing came 
to him along the way. He grew in grace and in 
the knowledge of God. The exercise of his gifts 

208 



His Religious Eocperience. 



209 



brought their enlargement. New sorrows brought 
fresh opportunities to prove the faithfulness of 
God, and new joys afforded him fresh occasions 
for thanksgiving. 

Next to his conversion the most important spir- 
itual crisis of his life occurred during his first 
pastorate at St. Paul Church, Cincinnati. In the 
summer of 1883 he had charge of the Epworth 
Heights Camp-meeting, near Cincinnati. During 
its progress the teachings of Dr. William Jones, 
of the St. Louis Conference, on the subject of en- 
tire sanctification deeply impressed him. The 
teachings of Dr. Sheridan Baker had already given 
him much light upon this subject. As a young 
minister, in common with all other young min- 
isters of the Methodist Church, he had studied 
John Wesley's "Plain Account of Christian Per- 
fection," and had answered in the affirmative the 
bishop's interrogatory, "Do you expect to be made 
perfect in love in this life.f^" But he had never 
felt that he had received this grace. 

During the camp-meeting at Epworth Heights, 
however, he sought and received this blessing. And 
during all his ministry afterward he gave this doc- 
trine and experience a prominent place in his 
teachings. 

However interpretations of religious experi- 
ences may differ, — and we recognize that an inner 
14 



210 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



experience is one thing, while its theological inter- 
pretation is a wholly different thing — ^there is 
no doubt that there came to Bishop Joyce a great 
spiritual baptism at Ep worth Heights, which pro- 
foundly affected his after ministry. There was 
a freedom, an earnestness, a fearlessness, and an 
unction attending his public ministrj^, and a pa- 
tience and love and steadiness of self-control in 
his private life, which showed how deeply the grace 
of God had permeated his springs of action and 
feeling. We who had known him in his Indiana 
pastorates felt that, wliile he had always been a 
good man and a useful minister of Christ, a new 
emphasis had come into his ministry and a new 
beauty into his life during his Cincinnati pas- 
torate. 

On his election to the episcopacy he emphasized 
the higher Christian life at his Annual Confer- 
ences. He took with him to many of his Confer- 
ences Dr. Samuel A. Keen, of the Ohio Confer- 
ence, who conducted ^'Pentecostal Meetings" for 
the ministers and people. In these meetings the 
ofBce and work of the Holy Spirit were emphasized, 
and preachers and people were urged to seek the 
experience of perfect love and the anointing of 
the Spirit for service. After the death of Dr. 
Keen, Bishop Joyce took with him much of the 
time the Rev. Edward S. Dunham, of the Central 



His Religious Experience. 



211 



Ohio Conference, who conducted meetings on the 
same lines. It is not possible to estimate the new 
courage and hope and spiritual re-enforcement 
generally that came to thousands of ministers and 
lay members as a result of these "Pentecostal" 
services. While thousands of irreligious people 
and persons holding a merely nominal relation to 
the Church were converted. 

Bishop Joyce had with him in this work Dr, 
William A. Spencer, Secretary of the Church Ex- 
tension Society, whenever it was possible for the 
latter to so arrange his work, and also Dr. Manley 
S. Hard, of the same Board, both of whom pre- 
ceded the Bishop to the heavenly reward. 

At first glance it might seem that such services 
were an unnecessary innovation. A reference to 
the custom of Mr. Wesley in his conferences with 
his preachers shows that they were a renaissance 
rather than an innovation. For the early Confer- 
ences dealt chiefly with matters of Christian expe- 
rience. Stevens's "History of Methodism" makes 
that clear. The experimental note was the domi- 
nant note of the early Conferences. But as the 
Church grew and became a vast and complex or- 
ganism, with great benevolent and educational in- 
terests, and many organizations seeking a hearing 
before the annual gatherings of the preachers, the 
Annual Conference, as a means of grace, disap- 



212 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



peared, save as an occasional sermon aroused men 
to seek their spiritual improvement. The confer- 
ring together concerning personal religious expe- 
rience dropped out of the program, and the em- 
phasis came to be on things ecclesiastical rather 
than on things experimental. It was to re-intro- 
duce this spiritual note that Bishop Joyce insti- 
tuted Pentecostal meetings at his Conferences, usu- 
ally held in the afternoon, when the Bishop and 
his cabinet were busy. But sometimes they were 
held at other hours. It was, of course, , because 
he could not be there in person to direct the work 
that the Bishop took with him such brethren as 
Dr. Keen and Mr. Dunham to lead the work. 

Rev. Ira C. Cartwright, of our Mission in 
Mexico, told in the Central Christian Advocate 
how, on one occasion at least, Bishop Joyce intro- 
duced a Pentecostal service into the midst of the 
business session of the Conference: 

"One day Bishop Joyce stopped in the midst 
of the work of the day and said, 'Brethren, let us 
put aside for a time the temporal things, and talk 
of Jesus and His love.' Then in a personally con- 
ducted excursion he took us all and sat down with 
us at Jesus' feet. O, what a love-feast it was! I 
dare not venture to describe it." 

Rev. E. S. Dunham, who was associated with 
Bishop Joj^ce in this work at forty-three Confer- 
ences, writes concerning him: 



His Religious Experience. 



213 



"His anxiety for the spirituality of the Church, 
especially for the young men of the ministry, was 
so great as to cost him seasons of deep depression 
of soul. He was often with Jesus in Gethsemane 
with a heart of anguish. Going to his room on 
a Sunday morning, we found him under an unusual 
depression. He said : ^To-day I will lay my hands 
on the heads of two large classes of young men for 
ordination, and I will urge them to receive the Holy 
Ghost. O, that they would receive Him! But I 
fear that they will not, but will go out to be pro- 
fessional preachers and not soul winners.' 

"In this latter respect he was always an object 
lesson to the ministry. Never did he fail, on Con- 
ference Sunday, after lifting his congregation 
heavenward, to pull his net with from fifty to one 
hundred or more weeping souls on their feet for 
prayers. One of his most effective sermons, never 
to be forgotten by its hearers, was ^Peter the Fish- 
erman.' (Luke V, 4.) ^Launch out into the deep 
and let down your nets for a draught.' His vivid 
description of Peter's sinking boat, full of fish in 
an unfruitful place, — and its climax, that God is 
always ^a good paymaster, for He paid Peter well 
for the use of his boat, and He will pay you in 
your hard field if you will take the Master with 
you,' sent a thrill of hope to many a discouraged 
preacher's heart, and brought to him many per- 
sonal letters reporting revivals in the most un- 
likely fields. I could narrate many beautiful inci- 
dents of remarkable conversions on these occasions, 
as the result of his masterful sermons on Confer- 
ence Sunday, but space forbids. 

"His desire, often expressed, was that he might 



214 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



be taken to heaven from the pulpit, while in one 
of his 'holy gales of glory.' God answered his 
prayer, for he heard the summons while preaching 
a holiness sermon in a Pentecostal camp-meeting. 
He lives still in the hearts of the many thousands 
whom he helped to see Jesus. He was a Boanerges, 
with the soul-winning art of ApoUos." 

Concerning the camp-meeting at Red Rock, 
Minnesota, where Bishop Joyce was stricken down, 
the Pentecostal Herald says: 

"Our beloved Bishop Joyce had graced the 
meeting for several days. There was not a more 
humble, interested listener than he. Smiles broke 
over his face, tears coursed down his cheeks, praises 
broke from his lips, as the Word was preached by 
one and another. He had not preached — we were 
saving him for Sunday, when he was to preach 
in the morning." 

The same paper says that at a meeting of the 
Minnesota State Holiness Association, held a few 
days before his death. Bishop Joyce said: 

"When I am resting under the flowers I want 
it told as a memorial that I had this blessing of 
entire sanctification as a work of grace by faith 
in the blood of Christ, subsequent to regeneration." 

No one who knew Bishop Joyce will need to 
be informed that his teaching of the experience 
of holiness was not controversial or censorious, but 



His Religious Experience. 



215 



loving and persuasive. It was perfect love and 
the Spirit's indwelling that he dwelt on. The 
spirit with which he approached the subject and 
approached men concerning the deeper things of 
the religious hfe was Fletcher-like in its tender- 
ness and love. 

It was probably because he was never a didac- 
tic preacher on any theme that he presented but 
little the doctrinal phases of this experience. His 
was rather the ministry of exhortation, inspiration, 
and consolation. 

Mrs. Jennie Fowler Willing wrote to an East- 
ern paper as follows concerning an interview with 
Bishop Joyce: 

"I met him one day in a Cincinnati restaurant, 
and while we stopped for a word I told him how 
I rejoiced over his wonderful revival services dur- 
ing the session of the North Indiana Conference. 
'Yes/ he replied, 'they were wonderful. I 've 
learned the secret.' 'I wish you would explain it 
to me,' I replied. 'Of all things in the world, I 
most want to know how to secure the outpouring 
of the Spirit upon the people.' 'It is nothing 
more nor less,' he said, 'than absolute dependence 
on the Holy Spirit,' " 

r 

As illustrating the large place which the sense 
of God's presence had not only in his preaching, 
but in his administrative work, we introduce this 



216 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



letter from a prominent member of the Newark 
Conference, Dr. A. H. Tuttle: 

"The last time I conversed with him (Bishop 
Joyce), was when he presided over the Newark 
Conference in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He called 
me to his office, and held me there for more than 
an hour talking about personal religion. Many 
committees were waiting outside; but he held me 
fast, saying, need this heavenly tonic to fit me 
for the work these men are bringing to me.^ " 

Administration in the power of the Holy 
Spirit! What a lesson for the eighteen thousand 
pastors of Methodism! If we entered every Offi- 
cial Board meeting and every committee meeting 
"in the Spirit," what irritations and misunder- 
standings would be avoided, and how infinitely 
smoother would move the machinery of the Church, 
the operation of which now wears out so much of 
the vital force of preachers and lay leaders ! 

Of this same interview Dr. Tuttle writes: 

"I was especially impressed with Bishop Joyce's 
depreciation of himself. He told me how humili- 
ated he had felt when he last preached at Ocean 
Grove. It so happened that only the day before 
I had been talking with one of our young preach- 
ers about his ideals when he said to me: ^I had 
been a long while asking God to give me the true 
conception of the way I should preach. I went to 
Ocean Grove and heard many sermons, but felt 



His Religious Experience, 21'! 



that none approached my ideal, till at last Bishop 
Joyce preached. It was a sermon simple in its 
outline, but filled with argument and illustration 
that came from a master mind. The language was 
luminous, the manner fervent, and above all else 
the spirit was of God. The effect on the congre- 
gation and on myself was overpowering. God had 
answered my prayer. I hastened to the platform 
to thank the Bishop, when I saw him look over the 
retiring multitude, the tears raining down his 
cheeks. He lifted his hands over them as if in 
benediction, and said, that I knew how to 
preach this great gospel !" ' " 

Dr. Tuttle goes on to say: 

"I told the Bishop of this interview and inci- 
dent. His eyes flooded and he said: ^How dare I 
mistrust Him when He has given us such a gospel 
and has commissioned us to go preach it! How- 
ever feeble the preacher, the power of the gospel 
is sure to be felt.' That was Bishop Joyce. What 
he was and what he did can be explained only by 
the fact that he believed the Gospel of Christ as 
the power of God unto salvation to every one that 
believeth." 

It would be an imperfect delineation of relig- 
ious experience if we were to confine it to a de- 
scription of inner enjoyment, or any inner exer- 
cises whatever, however genuine and important 
these may be. It is the effect of these in the 
ethical realm that we must account of greatest 



218 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



importance. This phase of his religious life pro- 
foundly impressed those who had the opportunity 
of close observation. We have seen him under the 
most trying circumstances , where clasliing interests 
made his position one of the greatest difficulty and 
delicacy, and where officious and unreasonable men 
must have tried him to the uttermost, and yet there 
was no departure from the steadiness and kindness 
and calmness which characterized him in the less 
strenuous hours. This is the more notable from 
the fact that his natural temperament was vol- 
canic. Nature's carbon had by abounding grace 
been transformed into diamond. 

Bishop Goodsell in Zion's Herald illuminates 
this phase of Bishop Joyce's character: 

"My heart is heavy because of the death of 
Bishop Joyce. Elected by the same General Con- 
ference, our friendship began with the day of our 
election when we prayed together for grace for 
our work. For seventeen years his acquaintance 
has been both inspiring and delightful to me. He 
Vv^as a holy man, pure in speech and right in con- 
duct. His conscience was rightly tutored, and took 
cognizance of all his powers. There was no part 
of him which was not under control. Naturally 
quick-tempered, he could be silent under provoca- 
tion when few could resist a strong sentence. He 
under-rated the grace that was in him when he told 
me that he was silent when tried, because if he 
began to speak it set him on fire; or, as he put it, 



His Religious Experience. 



219 



with a twinkle in his eye, 'It stirred up the Irish 
in him.' In all these seventeen years of intimacy 
I recall nothing unworthy in him of the Christian 
gentleman and bishop. He differed without anger, 
debated without heat, and estimated without de- 
preciation or the slightest sign of jealousy or envy. 
He praised warmly, and was cold and critical only 
to himself. . . . He said more than once (to his 
brother bishops) with a holy joy to which he had 
a right: 'My dear colleagues, you are all more 
gifted in many ways than I. But God gives me 
something, too: He gives me access to souls. In 
every Conference some are converted.' . . . He 
was a very brave man, not only in meeting physical 
peril, but in administration. He did not let wrong 
things stay because it was easy, nor wrong men 
remain in power for fear of raising enemies. He 
would be the last to claim freedom from mistakes. 
He told me he felt he had made some in Eastern 
administration ; but no one doubted that these were 
due to imperfect knovdedge of Eastern conditions 
and not to self-will." 

Rare indeed is it to have such a cluster of 
ethical qualities in one life. Courage, to the point 
of self-sacrifice ; humility, accounting others better 
than himself ; patience, bearing all things and hop- 
ing all things; purity, transparent whiteness of 
soul; and love, abounding love toward God and 
men. "Granite base, fluted column, and lily-work 
at the top," a columnar character, "polished after 
the similitude of a palace." 



CHAPTER XVII. 



A Beautiful. Home Life. 

BISHOP JOYCE was greatly blessed in his 
home life. On the twentieth of March, 
1861, he married Miss Caroline Walker 
Bosserman, of Laporte, Indiana. It was a most 
happy union. To rare personal graces his com- 
panion added a devotion to the work of the Master 
that m^de the young minister and his wife one 
in the completest sense. All through the years of 
his ministry this devotion never flagged. She was 
his helper and consoler always. In every pastorate 
the people bore testimony to her noble Christian 
character and to her charm as a woman. 

It is scarcely possible to over-estimate the in- 
fluence of the minister's wife in making or un- 
making the preacher's success. The home life of 
Bishop Joyce was a constant source of inspiration 
to him. And his home was more — it was what God 
designed every minister's home should be, a model 
to the people of the communities where they lived. 

On the occasion of receiving their own por- 
traits from the members of St. Paul Church in 

220 



A Beautiful Home Life. 



221 



Cincinnati, Dr. Joyce said, in semi-humorous vein: 
"Twenty-two years ago I asked the lady at my 
side if she would become the wife of a Methodist 
preacher, with the prospect of moving once a year. 
If she could say ^Yes' to that proposition it was 
a bargain. She did say 'Yes,' and neither of us 
has ever regretted our decision." 

We think that ministers will generally affirm 
that the wives of preachers have the heavier end 
of the yoke. They have to stay at home when 
their husbands are away on the long circuit trips. 
The burden of the absolutely necessary economies 
falls upon them. And of all Methodist ministers 
the bishops have to be away from home most, and 
their wives have most reason to suffer from lone- 
liness. We do not believe the Church in general 
understands how much of sacrifice the office of 
general superintendent in Methodism entails, es- 
pecially upon the wives of the bishops, the hus- 
bands being away months at a time. 

Mrs. Joyce bore the enforced absences uncom- 
plainingly, accepting them as a part of the burden 
of service for God. At those times when the 
Bishop came home utterly wearied in mind and 
body, and oppressed with the burdens of the 
Churches, and would say, "O, I wish I could go 
to sleep and never have to awaken," it was his 
wife who soothed and comforted him. 



222 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



Two sons were born to them. One of them, 
their second cliild, Wilbur, died in infancy. Their 
first child, Frank Melville, grew to manhood, and 
became an honor and source of great comfort to 
them. During his college days at Greencastle, 
Indiana, this son organized and drilled the cham- 
pion college military company of the country. It 
bore the name of ^^The Asbury Cadets," and at 
the national tournament at Indianapolis, Indiana, 
in 1882, in competition with companies from cities 
and colleges all over America, it won third prize. 
While the Artillery Company from Asbury Uni- 
versity, also organized and led by Captain Frank 
Joyce, won first prize over all competitors. Well 
does the writer recall the exultant pride with which 
we undergraduates at the college received the news 
of these great victories. This son afterwards arose 
to high rank in the business circles of Cincinnati 
and Minneapolis, where his home now is. It was 
in his home that Bishop Joyce died, and with him 
the widow of the Bishop now resides. 

During the pastorate at Greencastle Bishop 
Joyce's sister died, and left a son, Melville, whom 
Dr. and Mrs. Joyce adopted and reared. This 
son on reaching manhood married, and makes his 
home in Cincinnati. 

Three and a half years before the Bishop's 
death they had moved into their new home. And 



A Beautiful Home Life. 



on New- Year's day, 1902, Bishop Joyce drew up 
the following paper, in gratitude to God and in 
token of their love to Colonel Joyce, and all the 
members of the household signed it: 

"We wish to say that we regard it as a great 
privilege as well as a blessing and joy to be able 
to sit under our own vine and fig-tree in this our 
new home, and together eat our bountiful dinner 
on this the first day of the new year, 1902. Surely 
our lines have fallen to us in pleasant places, and 
we have a goodly heritage. The Lord our Heav- 
enly Father has been, and continues to be exceed- 
ingly kind and gracious to us, filling our home 
with plenty, and also filling our hearts and lives 
with a great gladness and supreme joy. We recog- 
nize His hand in all the blessings we this day have, 
and without hesitation or distrust or misgivings, 
trust Him for His guidance and blessings through 
the year upon which we now enter, and will do the 
same through the years He may in His blessed 
kindness give and allow us to live. And we not 
only thank Him, but we anew surrender our lives to 
Him, and pledge Him our unwavering love and 
faithful and loyal devotion and obedience so long 
as we shall live. And we not only give our lives 
anew to be His, but we dedicate this our new and 
beautiful home to Him, and ask Him as our Father, 
and His Son Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, 
and the blessed Holy Spirit, to fill our home with 
their presence, and thus make that sacred Presence 
an abiding blessing in our home, keeping us all in 
health and strength and joyfulness of spirit, glad 



224 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



to serve each other, and also be a blessing to all 
who may come within this our home. 

"We wish here to express our great and hearty 
appreciation of the love and devotion, and service 
and patience, and skill and labor, of our beloved 
son, husband, father and grandson, Frank Melville 
Joyce. Without his loving sacrifice and devotion, 
and constant care and vigilance, we never would 
have had this our comfortable and tasteful home; 
and with all our hearts we here and now, one and 
all, thank him for this wonderful service which he 
has rendered us. Therefore be it 

^'Resolved, That we present our beloved Frank 
with a copy of this paper, with our names attached 
to the same, as a testimony of our abiding love, 
affection, and devotion to him, ever praying that 
God through Jesus Christ our Lord, and by the 
blessing of the Holy Spirit, may keep us all in 
the riches and comforts and peace and joys of His 
inexhaustible and endless love. 
"(Signed) 

Isaac W. Joyce, 
Caruie W. Joyce, 
Jessie B. Joyce, 
Arthur R. Joyce, 
Caroline Joyce, 
Wilbur B. Joyce, 
Helen Joyce, 
Mrs. May A. Ervin 

(Bishop Joyce's mother)." 

We should go far before finding a more beau- 
tiful home picture than this, both in the tender- 
ness of the mutual love between the members of 



A Beautiful Home Life. 



225 



the households of father and son, and in the full 
recognition, the loving and glad confession, of the 
love of God in it all. 

This paper, drawn up by Bishop Joyce and 
signed by four generations represented in the 
home, might well become a model and inspiration 
for every Christian home in the land. When we 
remember that in this beautiful home much of the 
time Chinese girls were admitted while receiving an 
education to fit them for carrying the emancipating 
gospel of Jesus back to their country-women, it is 
a touching indication of the completeness with 
which this home of culture and refinement was dedi- 
cated to the service of Jesus Christ. 

And when Bishop Joyce came down to the hour 
of death, the precious wife who had gone uncom- 
plainingly with him to the hardest Indiana circuits, 
and shared his labors in the city pastorates, and 
had been at his side in his travels in foreign lands 
for years at a time, was still at his side, the same 
loving, devoted helpmate she had ever been. No 
touch was so soft as hers. No hand could answer 
to his wants with such deftness and tenderness. 
And the eyes of the sufferer looked the love and 
gratitude which his stricken lips could not utter: 

When pain and anguish wring the brow, 
A ministering angel thou!" 

15 



226 Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 

And it was she who went with him as far down 
into the "valley of the shadow" as it is permitted 
one soul to accompany another, and repeated for 
liim on the verge of Jordan the song: 

''What is this that steals upon my frame? 

Is it death, is it death? 
That soon will quench this vital flame? 

Is it death, is it death? 
If this be death I soon shall be 
From every pain and sorrow free ; 
I shall the King of glory see ! 

All is well ; all is well ! 

Weep not, my friends, weep not for me ; 

All is well ; all is well ! 
My sins are pardoned, I am free ; 

All is well ; all is well ! 
There not a cloud that doth arise 
To hid the Savior from my eyes ; 
I soon shall mount the upper skies ; 

All is well ; all is well ! 

Tune, tune your harps, ye saints in glory, 

All is well ; all is well ! 
I will rehearse the pleasing story, 

All is well ; all is well ! 
Bright angels are from glory come. 
They ^re round my bed, they're in my room, 
They wait to waft my spirit home. 

All is well ; all is well 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

The Last Days. 

THE last day or so of June and first two 
days of July, 1905, Bishop Joyce spent 
at the Red Rock camp-meeting, in Min- 
nesota. The camp ground is an old one, and is 
located on the bank of the Mississippi River, a 
few miles below St. Paul. 

On Sunday morning, July 2d, Bishop Joyce 
arose to preach. As a Scripture lesson he read 
the third chapter of Ephesians. The audience ob- 
served that he was deeply moved during the read- 
ing. When he came to the eighth verse he was 
quite overcome and had to stop several seconds to 
recover himself. The verse reads, "Unto me, who 
am less than the least of all saints was this grace 
given, to preach among the Gentiles the unsearch- 
able riches of Christ.'' The theme of the sermon 
was, "The Power and Ultimate Triumph of the 
Gospel of Christ." The Rev. Henry C. Morrison, 
of Louisville, Ky., who was on the platform, de- 
scribes the scene as follows: 

"His sermon was one of great power of thought 
and unusual unction in delivery. Just before he 

227 



228 Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



fell he said : ^They say I am growing old ; and not 
long since I found a photograph of myself taken 
some thirty years ago. I placed it alongside of 
my face and looked in a mirror. I could not rec- 
ognize the face and the picture as being that of 
the same man. I realized that I was growing old, 
but, friends, I did not feel the one-thousandth of a 
particle of sorrow, for this book' — pointing to the 
Bible — ^tells me I am immortal. I shall live for- 
ever.' I noticed him stagger, but he righted up. 
I was sitting in a chair almost in front. I moved 
my chair to the side of the pulpit, and very near, 
fearing he was going to break down. But he spoke 
on, clear in thought, but with thickening voice, 
and was saying : 'I have preached this blessed Gos- 
pel in almost every country under the sun, and 
everywhere it has the same blessed effect upon men 
that it has here at Red Rock.' He gave way, and 
I leaped forward from his left and Brother J. M. 
Harris from his right, and we caught him in our 
arms. Instantly a number of preachers surrounded 
him, and a large chair was placed behind him, in 
which he sat for a few moments. He said: will 
be all right directly, and want to finish my ser- 
mon.' Some one gave him water, and after a few 
moments he arose to preach. Rev. Brother Brown, 
pastor at Mankato, standing by him, and sup- 
porting him with his arm. ^None of you know 
what labor I have gone through, and if it is God's 
will that I go now, I would as soon go from here 
as anywhere.' We all (including Mrs. Joyce) 
entreated him not to attempt to preach further. 
It was plain that his right arm and lower limb 



The Last Days. 



229 



were paralyzed. He was placed in the chair and 
borne to his room. 

"The great audience remained perfectly quiet, 
and scores of people were weeping. I said to 
them: want all of you. Christians and sinners, 
in the Church and out of it, who feel within your 
hearts after this sermon and this scene that you 
will give your hearts to God, and live more devout 
and consecrated lives to stand.' It seemed that 
everybody present arose. At the two succeeding 
services of the day we had sixty-five professions of 
salvation." 

As the Bishop was being borne from the plat- 
form to his cottage he said: "If this is God's time 
and God's way, I am ready." 

The next day Bishop Joyce was removed to 
the family residence in Minneapolis. For four 
weeks he lingered, while his friends alternated be- 
tween hope and despair. The story of that period 
is vividly delineated b}^ the pastor of the family. 
Dr. Fayette L. Thompson, of the Hennepin Ave- 
nue Church, in the Northwestern Chi'istian Ad- 
vocate: 

"The concluding four weeks of helplessness in 
the life of Bishop Joyce are not less remarkable 
than the wonderful years of his vigorous health. 
The stately family home at 310 Groveland Ave- 
nue, Minneapolis, offered every facility for his 
most perfect care. The trained nurse, herself a 
Christian product of our own Asbury Hospital in 



230 Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



which for all the years of his residence among us 
the bishop has been so deeply interested, could not 
have surpassed her devotions had the sufferer been 
her father. The bishop's son, Colonel Frank M. 
Joyce, and his devoted wife, with utter self -for get- 
fulness night and day, ministered as utmost love 
alone can to every expressed or imagined desire. 
The beauty and charm of the affections manifest 
during those days can never be fully appreciated 
by the outside world, and are far too sacred to 
permit any verbal expression. The well known 
pride of the bishop in his only son and beautiful 
family, and his intense affection for each one of 
them, seemed to be greatly accentuated during 
these days, and he was not satisfied unless one or 
more of them were constantly with him. 

"For the first week he evidently alternated in 
his own mind between the strong expectation of 
recovery and an appreciation of his hopelessness. 
After the first shock had somewhat passed, for a 
few days some slight control over his helpless side 
appeared to be returning. So much so, that one 
morning with boyish glee and the old, familiar 
twinkle in his eye, running his hand fondly 
through his son's hair and proudly swinging, 
slightly, his helpless limb, he said, 'We '11 fool 
them yet.' 

"Somewhat later as his physician was leaving 
his side, he seized hold of his own shriveled cheek 
with his well hand and looked with a peculiarly 
penetrating gaze at his doctor as much as to say, 
'Can you help me.^' The physician strove to ig- 
nore the m_anifest question, but with a touch of 
his old, splendid imperiousness the bishop looked 



The Last Days. 231 



the more intently as though demanding an answer. 
At last, with quivering lips, the physician slowly 
shook his head. The bishop turned quickly on 
his pillow to hide his emotion, while the physician, 
with tears streaming down his cheeks, left the 
room. From that hour the great soul seemed to 
accept the inevitable. 

"Upon entering the room after a day or two 
of absence, this writer was greeted with a distinct 
smile and a slight nod of the head. With the 
hand over which he had control the bishop indi- 
cated the opposite side of the bed. When coming 
close to the bedside, with a vigorous up and down 
motion of the hand he distinctly articulated the 
one word ^pray.' We all understood him to sug- 
gest prayer, and knelt about his bed. During the 
prayer, by frequent pressure of his hands tightly 
clasped in those of the visitor, he expressed his 
approval of the individual petitions as intelligently 
and appreciatively as though in perfect health. 

"A little later he hummed through a four-line 
stanza of some hymn. It is quite impossible to 
be positive to the degree of certainty, but those 
who heard it and who knew his great fondness for 
the hymn are entirely sure that he was singing as 
his death song: 

^ There's a wideness in God's mercy, 

Like the wideness of the sea ; 
There 's a kindness in His justice, 
Which is more than liberty.' 

"The entire last day was a never-to-be-forgot- 
ten period. From early morning throughout the 
whole day there was a supernaturalness about his 



232 Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



room. The face of the sufferer was like some rare 
old porcelain with a light behind it. He was con- 
stantly looking intently upward, his lips moving, 
and he seemed in perpetual converse with an 
unseen presence. None there will ever doubt that 
he saw unseen things that day, and talked with 
invisible attendants. 

"Shortly after midnight it was seen that the 
end was drawing on. With finger on his pulse 
the physician said, ^It can not be long now.' 
Every heart was tense to the breaking point; but 
she who was henceforth to walk alone seemed 
wondrously strengthened. After a mioment, in 
quiet, yet bell-like tones, Mrs. Joyce said, ^If he 
could speak now I am sure he would say'— and 
then she repeated in the same even tones the lines 
from the hj^mn: 

* What is this that steals upon my fram?e? 
Is it death? Is it death?' 

"The spiritual effect of the entire scene baffles 
description. In a few brief moments it was well, 
eternally well. 

"Throughout all these hours one, more than 
all others, perpetually amazed everybody by her 
poise and self-control. One who more than all 
others suffered, yet was most composed of all. At 
Red Rock at the first, through the long nights of 
waiting, in the crisis hours, in all the sad prepa- 
rations for the services, at the last and always the 
same splendid resignation, she put us all to shame. 
Naught save a superlative character, re-enforced 
and glorified by the matchless fullness of divine 
grace, could thus "suffer and be strong.'^ 



The Last Days, 



233 



"Unexpected and heart-breaking affiction re- 
veals instantly and inevitably the real fiber of home 
life. The writer was in and out of this home at 
all hours of the night and day, probably more 
frequently than any save the family physician. 
The house was a temple. The place was holy 
ground. Utter and crushing sadness was in every 
heart, on every face, but trust in God, reliance 
upon heaven, a holy calm and strength such as only 
long years of godly fellowships can make possible, 
were there also. If the atmosphere of that home 
during these trying days could be expressed in a 
language intelligible to mankind, it would afford 
a demonstration of Christian realities incompar- 
ably above any of the arguments in the books. 

"Perhaps the final touch of glory came when, 
under a spreading canopy at Lakewood, with 
banks of flowers about him, the dust of the great 
servant of the Church was left to rest beneath the 
lilies he loved so well. From that spot in holy 
awe the sympathetic company turned away, 
touched by his immortal presence, into an honest 
purpose to live something of his life among men. 
Will one be misunderstood in saying that the heart- 
aches were well nigh lost in holy exultations, and 
that both tears and hallelujahs were in many 
hearts?" 

That death did not come to Bishop Joyce an 
unconsidered guest is indicated by some verses they 
found among his later papers after his death: 



234 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



^'O think, to step ashore, and that shore, Heaven! 
To take hold of a hand, and that, God's hand ! 
To breathe a new air, and that Celestial air ! 
To feel invigorated, and know it Immortality! 
O think ! To pass from the storm and tempest 

To one unbroken smile — 
To awake and find it Glory 

The funeral was held Monday, July 31st. 
Brief services at the house in the morning were con- 
ducted by Dr. Fayette L. Thompson, pastor of 
Hennepin Avenue Church. The body of Bishop 
Joyce, escorted by a delegation of official mem- 
bers of the various Methodist Churches of the city, 
reached Wesley Church at about 12.40 P. M. It 
was there received by the Methodist ministers of 
St. Paul and Minneapolis and adjoining Confer- 
ences. The body lay in state until 2.30 P. M., 
with a guard of honor consisting of the presiding 
elders of the Minnesota and Northern Minnesota 
Conferences, and Dr. P. A. Cool, pastor of Fowler 
Church, Minneapolis, and Dr. H. V. Givler, pastor 
of First Church, St. Paul, Minn. 

The services at Wesley Church were in charge 
of Dr. Thompson, assisted by Dr. L. T. Guild, 
pastor of the Church, Bishop W. F. McDowell, 
President George H. Bridgeman, of Hamline Uni- 
versity; Dr. W. B. Riley, of the First Baptist 
Church; Dr. W. H. Jordan, pastor of the First 
Methodist Episcopal Church, and Dr. F. M. Rule, 



The Last Days, 



presiding elder of the St. Paul District. The 
services were conducted without music, but the fa- 
vorite hymns of Bishop Joyce were read by a num- 
ber of the ministers. The main addresses were 
delivered by Bishop Walden and Bishop Berry. 
Bishop Merrill made a brief, touching talk. The 
pallbearers were the ministers who carried Bishop 
Joyce to the depot at Red Rock the day he was 
stricken. 

The following were the addresses delivered by 
Bishops Berry and Walden: 

"ADDRESS. 

BISHOP JOSEPH F. BERRY, BUFFALO, N. Y. 

"It seems not much longer ago than yesterday 
that the bishops closed their semi-annual meeting 
at Louisville, grasped hands in affectionate fare- 
well, and went out to another six months of toil. 
Bishop Joyce had been entertained at a private 
home, but on that closing day he came dowii to 
the hotel and took dinner with us. He looked very 
tired, and I remarked as much to him. He looked 
up at me with his charming smile and said: 'Yes, 
but I am going to have a long rest.' He meant 
a long rest at his home in Minneapolis, surrounded 
by his family and friends. He did not know — we 
did not know — that a longer and more exhilarating 
rest was just ahead, a rest amid the glories of the 
skies. 

"I make no attempt at formal discourse, but 



236 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce, 



speak out of my heart a simple tribute to the 
memory of one whom I loved as I have loved few 
men. If there should be overmuch of the personal 
element in what I shall say, you must pardon me; 
I can not speak in any other way. 

"I have been acquainted with Bishop Joyce 
since 1888. I have known and loved him only since 
1900. 

"I will never forget the morning, at the close 
of the General Conference, at Chicago, when he 
came into the editorial rooms of the Epworth 
Herald and announced to me that he had just been 
chosen by his colleagues to be president of the 
Epworth League. We spent two hours in con- 
ference and prayer for the League, which bore 
rich fruit during that quadrennium. That inter- 
view, with its earnest planning and praying, was 
the beginning of five years of most precious inti- 
macy. 

"As I have been thinking for the past day or 
two about my glorified friend, certain traits of his 
character have stood out conspicuously, and I must 
mention them to you: 

"First, our friend was an exceedingly sensitive 
man. To those who knew him only superficially 
this statement will seem strange, but it was more 
true of Bishop Joyce than of any public man I 
have known. When he was misunderstood it was a 
wound in his soul. Criticism cut him to the quick. 
He craved the appreciation of his friends. He 
coveted sympathy. A word of honest praise when 
he had done some splendid service was as *oint- 
ment poured forth.' It is not often that a man 
of such rugged strength, such courage, such 



The Last Days. 



237 



tenacity of purpose, such abounding enthusiasm, 
had also such deKcacy of f eehng, such sensitiveness, 
heartstrings that were made to moan or sing by 
the sHghtest zephyrs which blew upon them. But 
such was the combination in the character of our 
translated leader. 

"Second, this friend was absolute and undying 
in his friendships. What a lover he was! To a 
man he trusted he gave his whole heart. He would 
brave any criticism, much as he disliked it, make 
any sacrifice, endure any toil, take any risks which 
might seem necessary, to serve the man he loved. 
He may at times have been imposed upon by those 
who were unworthy of his confidence. His own 
heart was so pure that he thought all others pure. 
His motives were so free from selfishness that it 
was difficult for him to discern selfishness in others. 
And even when his eyes were opened to the truth, 
how slow he was to close his heart to one who 
had once been admitted there ! What finer trait is 
there than loyalty to one's friendships ? And what 
blacker thing is there than to accept the confi- 
dence of another and then betray that confidence? 
The friendships of Isaac W. Joyce were never 
based on self-interest. 

"Then Bishop Joyce was essentially demo- 
cratic. He was a plain man. He loved the plain 
people. Wealth, station, social pretense, civic or 
ecclesiastical position — these counted for nothing 
with him. Many of his closest friends were very 
poor. The plain circuit preacher had in him a 
brother. He v/ould as soon accept entertainment 
in a hovel as in a palace. He was especially kind 
to those who had nothing to give in return but 



238 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



their love. A storm of indignation was raised in 
a Tennessee town some years ago because Bishop 
Joyce accepted the hospitality of a colored fam- 
ily while he was serving his Church in that com- 
munity. He did not go to that humble home 
because he desired to provoke comment. He did 
not willingly invite the protest. He went there 
because he was invited, and because to accept the 
hospitality of the family seemed to him the most 
natural and proper thing in the world. He hated 
social caste, and assumptions of superiority be- 
cause of wealth or name aroused his hot indigna- 
tion. He was a common man and loved common 
people. 

"Then, the bishop was an intense missionary. 
The spirit of the propaganda was in his blood. 
He yearned for the salvation of the unsaved. Like 
his Master, he had compassion on the multitude. 
His serm^ons, his prayers, his conversation and 
his correspondence were all surcharged with an 
undying solicitude for the perishing. There was 
no spot on earth that he loved quite so well as the 
glowing altar of revival. No song was quite so 
sweet to his ears as that which sounded out as some 
seeking soul came into the light. No bishop of the 
Methodigt Episcopal Church ever came home from a 
foreign field m-ore absolutely in love with his field 
than Bishop Joyce when he came home from China. 
How he loved those brainy, awakening people! 
What pictures he painted of their redemption! 
No guests were so welcome in his home as re- 
turned missionaries. He used to say in speaking 
to his Conferences or at missionary meetings that 
he wauld rather be doing service in China than 



The Last Days. 



239 



anywhere else on earth, and that he would rather 
go to heaven, like Bishop Wiley, from that land 
than from any other spot on earth. His wife used 
sometimes to call his attention to the utterance 
which some persons thought extravagant, and re- 
minded him that at his age it could not be true 
that he would rather be in China. To this he 
would reply: mean just what I say; I mean just 
what I say.' 

"All will agree that Bishop Joyce was one of 
the most popular and effective preachers of his 
day. He was not at his best in a short and in- 
formal address. His greatest efforts were sermons 
he preached at the Conferences or upon special oc- 
casions. As a pastor in Indiana and in Cincinnati 
he was immensely popular. To sustain himself 
for eight years in practically the same territory, 
as he did in Cincinnati, was evidence of unusual 
intellectual and oratorical power. No Methodist 
preacher ever made such a profound impression 
upon that city as did Bishop Joyce. What re- 
vivals God gave him there! From the beginning 
he was a flaming evangelist. Our evangelist-bishop 
has fallen. 

"I heard him preach perhaps twenty times. 
Two sermons stand high above the others. One 
was the sermon delivered at our Epworth League 
convention at San Francisco. For an hour and 
a quarter he held that mighty host by the spell 
of his fervid eloquence. Though he spoke to 
nearly ten thousand people, his voice rang out 
clear and sweet, and marvelous in its winsomeness 
to the very close. In all parts of the country I 
meet persons who heard that sermon, and it lingers 



240 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



in the memory as a benediction. But, judged by 
its effect, the sermon Bishop Joyce preached at 
the Rock River Conference at Dixon was still 
mightier. ^^Launch out into the deep" was his 
text. There were two climaxes which were simply 
tremendous, over-mastering. The congregation 
was melted, uplifted and swayed as the storm 
moves the tree-tops of the forest. What a day 
it was! The waves of holy joy rolled higher and 
higher until nearly midnight, and scores were 
either converted or lifted into an enlarged spiritual 
hfe. 

"But at the basis of all this great life and 
far-reaching usefulness was the utter consecration 
which our leader had made to God. He believed 
in the Bible utterl3^ He was not troubled by 
doubt. He was gloriously converted. He never 
discredited for a moment his personal experience. 
He gripped with a grip of steel all the great 
verities of religion. Skepticism never neutralized 
his power. He believed in an uttermost salvation. 

"I was disappointed two weeks ago when I 
visited his bedside that he could not talk to me. 
I wanted to hear his familiar voice again. As he 
lies before us to-day he is still. We can not hear 
him speak. Yes, we can ! Yes, we can ! ^He being 
dead yet speaketh.' And what does he say.? Our 
translated leader, enthroned among the blood- 
washed throng, says to his colleagues of the Epis- 
copal Board, to the editors of our Methodist press, 
to the secretaries of our benevolent organizations, 
to our pastors in this and in other lands, to our 
great membership everywhere: ^Be true to God; 
be true to the Bible; be true to the Pauline doc- 



The Last Days. 



241 



trine of an uttermost salvation; be true to the 
traditions of the fathers ; accept the whole Gospel ; 
have faith in your mission, and press on to the 
conquest of the whole wide world." 

"ADDRESS, 

"bishop JOHN M. WALDEN, CINCINNATI, O. 

"It was by mutual request that Bishop Joyce 
and I were entertained together in the same home 
during the last Conference of the Bishops in Louis- 
ville. Those were precious days, and all the more 
precious to me now. Our associations in the past, 
and my presence to-day would lead me to be one 
of the family here instead of where I stand. But, 
looking forward to this moment, I felt I could not, 
although I seldom use manuscript — I felt I could 
not say what I desire to say without having the 
matter before me. 

Bishop Joyce and I became acquainted during 
the Northwest Indiana Conference in 1870, nearly 
thirty-five years ago. He was closing his first year 
as presiding elder, having been appointed by 
Bishop Clark the year before, when he had been 
a full member of the Conference only eight years. 
His early promotion caused a critical concern with 
some, but the hearty sympathy and interest of 
others. I did not know at that time that his birth- 
place was only two miles from where I was a 
boy. By this same bishop's suggestion I had been 
appointed to Cincinnati when I had been a full 
member of the Conference only seven years, a coin- 
cidence in our experience which may have had 
much to do with the beginning of our friendship. 
16 



242 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



I learned from Bishop Simpson that young Joyce 
had his work well in hand and that his colleagues 
respected his counsel. During the first decade, 
when he was received on probation, his work was 
such that he was then appointed presiding elder. 
Bishop Clark selected him for the position, because 
the character of his work arrested the bishop's at- 
tention and commanded his confidence. 

"At the close of a successful term on that dis- 
trict he was appointed to Lafayette, a station 
where, as pastor and as presiding elder, he was 
well known. It was one of the first important 
churches he was called upon to serve, and he spent 
ten years at Lafayette as pastor and presiding 
elder. His next pastoral term was in the church 
at Greencastle. Here his kindly life had a great 
influence upon the students. He found no reason 
to modify the evangelistic character of his preach- 
ing. At the close of this pastorate in 1879 his 
Conference elected him as a delegate to the Gen- 
eral Conference. In 1880 he became pastor of 
St. Paul Church in Cincinnati. The Church had 
been served by pastors known throughout the whole 
connection, and the bishops and the Church rep- 
resentatives were all concerned about the choice to 
be made. Bishop Peck appointed him in 1880, and 
at the close of 1883 he was appointed to Trinity, 
and after three years he was returned to St. Paul, 
where he served until he was elected bishop in 
1888. His pastoral service in these two churches 
covered a period of seven years and eight months. 
When he came to Cincinnati as pastor there was a 
discouraging debt on each of these two churches. 
He used ordinary means to interest the people of 



The Last Days, 



243 



the church, but he was insistent in impressing upon 
the officers of the church and Sunday-school the 
need of a great revival. He saw the necessity of a 
revival for the upbuilding of the church. This is 
his own record as stated in that memorial to Bishop 
Wiley: ^During my first pastorate at St. Paul 
God blessed his people with a revival of religion 
which continued three months.' He preached to 
relatively large congregations; he had revivals 
during each of the pastorates such as have not 
been witnessed in Cincinnati in a generation. There 
was an increase of membership in each church and 
full payment was made of the debts. This means 
ability iij the pulpit, an evangeHstic spirit, a faith- 
ful performance of pastoral duties, a practical 
leadership in temporal as well as in spiritual af- 
frairs of the church. He brought into his Epis- 
copal work the evangelistic spirit which was char- 
acteristic of his pastorate. He prepared his ser- 
mons not only with the desire to interest his con- 
gregations, but also with the view that his hearers 
might be led to the all-important decision. Many 
years ago in a mountain village in North Caro- 
lina, where Bishop Simpson and I were keeping 
watchnight, he told me that he attributed much of 
his success to his intense desire to bring his hearers 
to an immediate decision. 

"During his residence at Chattanooga he was 
an inspiration in the encouragement of our strug- 
gling churches in the South. A little after he had 
taken up his Episcopal duties at Chattanooga, 
owing to some peculiar conditions that arose at 
that time, he was elected Chancellor of Grant Uni- 
versity. His time was fully occupied with his 



244 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



Episcopal duties, yet for five years he held that 
position to the greatest advantage. 

"His wisdom and the element of leadership 
Were made prominent in the most delicate duty a 
bishop is called upon to perform, and that is in 
fixing the appointments of the preachers. In the 
discharge of this duty Bishop Joyce was able to 
render much valuable service, but he came to this 
duty with a brother's heart, and yet with a leader's 
conviction. He understood and sympathized with 
the preacher and his family, yet he never failed 
to recognize the material and spiritual welfare of 
the Church. He was devoted as any father could 
be, but when firmness was needed he was immov- 
able. 

"His work as bishop was done faithfully and 
well; no one could become more deeply interested 
in the work and carry it forward in a more advan- 
tageous way. Perhaps the most important work 
he did was in foreign fields, and no other foreign 
field interested him quite as much as China and 
its old and quaint civilization. Bishop Joyce in 
seventeen years has done more work in foreign 
fields than any other bishop in the episcopacy 
except myself. In 1898 he held twelve Con- 
ferences in Continental Europe; he had charge of 
Mexico in 1895 and thorouglily visited that work; 
in 1896-T he had charge of China, Korea and 
Japan and spent two consecutive years there, and 
he was the first to make the toilsome trip to the 
West China mission. His last foreign visit was 
to South America in 1903 and 1904. He went 
down one side of the coast and returned on the 
other side, visiting every part of the field. He 



The Last Days, 



245 



was vitally interested in every part of our foreign 
work. He was careful in his administration. He 
was anxious that our work should be Methodistic. 
It was necessary for him to preach through an 
interpreter, but his sermons were so full of the 
evangelistic spirit that his Episcopal visits marked 
a new Gospel era in those far foreign fields. This 
gives supreme significance to the words with which 
his life-work as a preacher culminated: have 
preached this Gospel in nearly every country on 
the globe, and always with the same effect!' His 
report in the Bishops' Conference of his two years 
service in Japan, China and Korea made a deep 
and lasting impression upon his hearers. Stead- 
fast as their faith was in the saving power of 
the Gospel, former reports from those fields had 
not led them to expect such results as followed 
his earnest and faithful preaching in China and 
Japan. At the close of his report he emphasized 
the impertance of preaching an evangelistic Gos- 
pel, and to close the sermon by an appeal to sin- 
ners to make an immediate decision by rising for 
prayers or in some other public way committing 
themselves to God their Saviour. With deep emo- 
tion he closed by saying, ^Brother bishops, let us 
give the Holy Ghost a chance!' That Board was 
moved as I never saw it moved before or since. 

"I am m.oved to make a single remark with- 
out having it committed to my paper. Here sits 
with us this afternoon the one who has been his 
companion in his ministerial work for forty-four 
years or about that time. No one but a bishop's 
wife knows what the Episcopacy means for the 
home. It means the breaking up of home. Many 



246 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce, 



of your bishops sleep more nights on the sleeping 
car than they do in their homes. This companion 
for twenty-seven years shared with Bishop Joyce 
the lot of a pastor's wife. During a large portion 
of his travels in foreign fields she was with him, 
and during one year alone he traveled nearly forty 
thousand miles. Our people do not know, the 
Methodist Church does not know what a pastor's 
wife sacrifices in building up the Church. The 
Church does not know the blessed influence that 
the bishops' wives exert upon the welfare of the 
Church. 

"Bishop Joyce was strong as a friend. Con- 
cerning Bishop Wiley he wrote: ^He was a true 
friend; he dearly loved his friends and opened his 
heart to them. I can say of Bishop Wiley that 
he was one of the truest friends I ever had.' These 
words mean that Bishop Joyce knew what friend- 
ship was and cherished it. He had many true 
friends, but, as with every man, a few stood very 
close to him. I was cognizant of the friendship 
between him and Bishop Wiley. He and the 
sainted Ridgaway were far more than neighbor 
pastors. I knew well that precious fellowship for 
Wiley, Ridgaway and Chase. Friends, they are 
united. He and one member of his old Confer- 
ence (still living, or I would give his name) in 
Indiana had been in the closest friendship all 
these years. There are few of such friendships, 
but they make earth much richer. 

"I think I may be pardoned for speaking of 
this incident: From that room where the dear ones 
were watching over him so tenderly and faithfully 



The Last Days. 



during those anxious days and nights came this 
message in a letter written from that home: Trank 
can help him talk by catching a word now and 
then and reading his thoughts apparently. Yes- 
terday he was trying to talk of Bishop Walden. 
He kept saying "John M." over and overj and 
when Frank said, "John M. Walden?" he said, 
"Yes," and then added slowly, "Best friend I ever 
had." ' And I know what those words mean. 

"This friend, moved by that unspeakable feel- 
ing to the which name friendship is given in lim- 
ited human speech, offers this tribute, imperfect 
as it is, to his dear memory. These earthly trib- 
utes seem inadequate, but they are filled with 
tender and sacred meaning. We know something 
of their worth; we feel something of their inner 
power, but he, seeing as he is seen, and knowing 
as he is known now, may they not be even more 
to him than to us with only our earthly vision.^ 
But if all this is so, and who doubts ii? these 
tributes are but a minor part of what has become 
real to him. During his last visit to St. Paul 
Church, how many gathered around him who had 
been converted under his ministry! How many 
have gained the heavenly home in whose salvation 
he was instrumental! Now they have gathered 
about him there. May he not now know how many 
were saved during all the years of his evangelistic 
preaching? What a constellation must be the 
stars in his crown of rejoicing! That constella- 
tion is the crowning of his passion to win souls to 
Christ. But, far better than even all this, far 
better than all the saintly greetings, has been the 



248 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



approving smile of the enthroned Jesus, whose 
all-saving power was the dominant note of his 
preaching, and the words of his Jesus, his Lord, 
whom he strove to serve loyally, to complete his 
joy, ^Well done, faithful servant!' 



CHAPTER XIX. 



Isaac Wilson Joyce as We Knew Him. 

THE "Great-Heart'' of Methodism is dead! 
So thousands felt when the news flashed 
over the wires that Isaac Wilson Joyce 
was no more. 

Eighteen months have passed since then and 
the feehng of bereavement is as fresh as on the 
day he was stricken; a feehng by no means con- 
fined to the denomination of which Bishop Joyce 
was an honored representative. The time has 
been long enough to permit a sober estimate of 
his character and work. And with a multitude of 
people that estimate will declare Bishop Joyce to 
have been the most Christ-like man they ever knew. 

There was about him a personal magnetism 
that was the product of warm sympathies and per- 
sonal graces. It drew men to him. Coupled with 
it was a dignity, both of manner and character, 
which won their respect, forbidding undue famil- 
iarity. This respect was heightened by the ca- 
pacity he displayed in the management of men and 
affairs. Courage and gentleness were so admir- 

249 



250 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



ably blended as to provoke wonder that either 
could exist so fully, and brook at the same time 
the other's presence. All this was combined with 
a passion of zeal and enthusiasm for the kingdom 
of God and for the personal Christ that often 
rendered his personahty radiant. Particularly was 
this last impression produced when he was at his 
best in the pulpit. Whatever the conventional 
standards of pulpit discourse might offer in crit- 
icism of the homiletical structure of his sermons, 
or as to their subject-matter, judged by that most 
accurate of all canons, the total effect produced. 
Bishop Joyce was a remarkable preacher. Few, 
indeed, are the men of this generation who have 
touched the secret springs of being in so many 
people. And, not as his type of preachers are 
usually credited with doing, only emotionally and 
evanescently, but permanently. While often the 
emotions have been profoundly moved, yet the will 
and the moral nature have been moved also, and 
when precipitation has taken place, there have been 
seen the crystallizings of new and holy character. 
In this regard Bishop Joyce's ministry was truly 
apostolic. Under his preaching the phenomena of 
the earlj'^ Christian preaching were continually re- 
appearing. And when it is remembered that this 
was in a "burnt district" age — a generation in 
which the pendulum has swung to the farthest 



Isaac Wilson Joyce as We Knew Him. 251 

extreme from the emotional phases of the apostolic 
era, and when the people called Methodists main- 
tain for the greater part an attitude of apology 
for being the depository of a "heart" religion, it 
becomes apparent how much independence of in- 
tellect — not to say courage — Bishop Joyce's at- 
titude required. For it is harder to be true to a 
teaching wliich, because of excesses or abuse, has 
been discredited, than to champion an entirely new 
interpretation of religion. 

The achievements of Bishop Joyce's career 
bulk large. The work he accomplished in the 
pastorate, the unexpected strength which his Epis- 
copal administration developed, the new impulse 
which he gave to evangelism throughout the whole 
Church, the impetus he imparted to missionary 
enterprise, and the powerful influence which he 
exerted on individuals, especially the rank and file 
of the preachers of Methodism, were extraordi- 
nary, even for one in his high position. 

His career is full of encouragement to the 
average men in the ministry — average in ability 
and in educational equipment — as showing, not 
how high a position a man of less than the highest 
intellectual equipment and power in the realm of 
pure intellect can attain, but as showing how much 
such a man can actually achieve that is of perma- 
nent value to the kingdom of God. With strong 



252 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



though not transcendent mind, and with an edu- 
cation little better than the high school at the 
start, though afterwards greatly enlarged by 
study, his degree of Master of Arts being obtained 
by a course of study, this man of God, by an 
absolute devotion to the core of the Gospel, wielded 
an influence and achieved results which many of 
greater natural gifts and greater scholarsiiip have 
utterly failed to approach. 

This suggests two queries: whether we must 
not revise our classification of "abilities" as com- 
monly estimated, and assign a larger place to tem- 
peramental and heart qualities, and a less com- 
manding place to pure intellect. As Bishop Joyce 
once said to the writer : "More preachers fail from 
lack of heart than through a lack of head." Sec- 
ond, it suggests the query whether the Church in 
choosing her officials would not do wisely to take 
more account of these elements of strength in mak- 
ing her choice of leaders. That intellectual Phari- 
saism which trusts in itself that it is brainy, and 
despises others, is an offense to both God and man, 
and fails always to work the righteousness of 
God. 

But Isaac W. Joyce was much more than a suc- 
cessful preacher. He was a broad-visioned man, 
taking the keenest interest in everything that af- 
fected the well-being of his fellows. He took the 



Isaac Wilson Joyce as We Knew Him, 253 



liveliest interest in politics. And his politics was 
of the stalwart Republican school, bred-in during 
the civil war. However the new generation might 
be carried off into new schools of prophesying, 
Bishop Joyce was mindful of the forces and ideals 
that had come into such sharp and fierce conflict 
during the struggle between the States, and this 
determined his political alignment, although in 
the last few years of his life he manifested sym- 
pathy with the Prohibition party's work. He was 
an idol among old soldiers. They heard him with 
delight, and again and again called on him for 
speeches. Except in his directly evangelistic ap- 
peals he was at his best on patriotic themes. What- 
ever had to do with the flag and the institutions 
and principles for which it stood, awoke his deepest 
enthusiasm. Never shall the writer forget when, 
as a boy, perched up in a window overlooking the 
pulpit in the church at Greencastle, Indiana, we 
heard him grow eloquent over the greatness of 
America and over God's plans for her; and how 
his eyes flashed and his face glowed as he intro- 
duced in his peroration Longfellow's "Building 
of the Ship:" 

"Humanity with all its fears, 
"With all the hopes of future years, 
Is hanging breathless on thy fate." 



254 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



And every one of us boj^s was perfectly sure that 
it was; the very way Dr. Joyce said it carried ab- 
solute conviction. 

Bishop Joyce had a genius for making and 
holding friends. He had the faculty of draw- 
ing them to him with silken cords and then 
binding them to him "with hooks of steel." His 
correspondence — the amount of it and the variety 
of it — with all sorts and conditions of people — re- 
veals it. The letters that came pouring in after 
liis death reveal it. When some good men die 
those who knew them say: "What a loss his death 
is to the Church! Who can do the work he has 
been doing But it is soon found that the work 
has another workman at hand fully equal to it, 
and the loss is quickly repaired. But when Bishop 
Joyce died it was as though a blow had been 
struck to hundreds of hearts all over the world, 
and they all cried out, "Behold and see if any 
sorrow like unto my sorrow!" 

We may not know just how that full witchery 
was wrought, but such things as these may account 
for it in part. A young lad in Lafayette, Indiana, 
comes along with liis daily papers on Christmas. 
Mr. Joyce, the Methodist minister, was to liim no 
more than any other customer. But when the 
paper went to his home that day, into the boy's 
hand Mr. Joyce slipped a bright new dollar, with 



Isaac Wilson Joyce as We Knew Him. 255 



a cheery "Merry Christmas!" And the boy went 
bounding down the street to finish his route and 
carry the news to his mother. Eighteen or twenty 
years afterward when Dr. Joyce was pastor of a 
Cincinnati church that boy, now become the head 
of a railroad company, sent word to Dr. Joyce 
"that he was never to pay a cent of railroad fare 
on any part of his lines, and that he could have 
anything on that railway except the roadbed." 
At Greencastle another poor boy came trudging 
in from work one evening, to be told by his 
widowed mother: "Brother Joyce was here awhile 
ago and left this for you." And she put into his 
hand a crisp five dollar bill. "He says this is to 
pay your admission fee to the preparatory depart- 
ment of the University — that he wants to have the 
pleasure of paying your first fee." Every other 
dollar of his whole course through college and 
seminary that boy earned. But that first five dol- 
lars looked the biggest and the brightest of any 
that he ever handled before or since. And there 
was never a day after that that boy would not have 
done anything on earth for "Brother Joyce." 

A young man in an Indiana town, ambitious, 
but with no adequate opening in the town, writes 
Dr. Joyce about it at Cincinnati. And Dr. Joyce 
in the midst of his heavy and responsible pas- 
torate, has time to go out and find a situation on a 



256 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



daily paper for the lad, and he begins a career 
of usefulness and success in the newspaper world. 

A teacher's health breaks down in her work in 
an Indiana town. She is the daughter of a de- 
ceased preacher of Dr. Joyce's old Conference in 
Indiana. He sends for her to come down to Cin- 
cinnati, arranges for her entrance to a hospital, 
secures special rates for her and looks after her 
as tenderly as a father during the months of her 
illness. He was Great-Heart all the way along! 
When some one spoke about his doing so much 
for the poor, he replied: " I have been poor my- 
self, and I am going to help every struggling per- 
son I can." 

An incident in the St. Paul pastorate at Cin- 
cinnati further illustrates this quality. In his 
round of visiting one day he called on one of the 
St. Paul members. Her only child was dying from 
scarlet fever. The neighbors were afraid to go 
near. There was no servant in the house and the 
woman was in despair and wild with grief. Dr. 
Joyce went to the cellar, found kindling and coal, 
made a fire in the grate, then went out and found a 
friend to go and help the mother, and ordered 
groceries and other things for the comfort of the 
home. The next day the precious child was bur- 
ied. The mother never ceased her expressions 
of gratitude for her pastor's timely help in the 
darkest hours of her life. 



Isaac Wilson Joyce as We Knew Him. 257 



Ex-President Gobin, of DePauw University, 
wrote of him, in the Central Christian Advocate: 

"To strangers, his bearing sometimes seemed a 
little too independent, if not haughty, but no man 
had more genuine sympathy for the needy and 
afflicted. In one of his wealthy churches some 
ladies were criticising him for his assistance of a 
^ne'er-do-weir family in his parish, claiming that 
he allowed himself to be imposed upon, but with 
much emphasis he answered: 'That woman (a 
widow with three children) is your sister in the 
Church and deserves your sympathy, and not your 
censure.' 

"When about to move from a certain city, he 
and Mrs. Joyce were tendered a reception in one 
of the largest and finest homes in the place. Of 
course, great multitudes ca.m.e to say good-by to 
the beloved pastor and wife. Before the conclu- 
sion of the occasion he asked to be excused to at- 
tend to an errand, as he Vvas to leave in the morn- 
ing on an early train. He went away from this 
scene of elegance and compliments to make a part- 
ing visit to a poor family in a distant, dark and 
wretched part of the city, where he left a gift of 
five dollars out of his own pocket to meet emer- 
gencies." 

We read in Holy Writ of One who went about 
doing good. Is not the secret of Bishop Joyce's 
power over people's hearts that he followed in the 
Master's steps ? 

There was that about Bishop Joyce's friend- 
17 



258 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce, 



ship that made those who shared it feel that each 
was an especially favored one. This was not be- 
cause of any impression he attempted to make. 
There was no insincerity about it. It was because 
it was easy and delightful for him to love. And 
his whole heart went out in unaff*ected love to his 
friends. The personal element was so strong as 
that each felt himself to be favored above all 
others. 

Friends of his youth maintained their intimacy 
with him up to his death. Friends made in his 
early pastorates never forgot him. The touch of 
other personalities never effaced his image from 
their hearts. They loved him and he them, to the 
end. \^Tiat a vital things liis love was! 

Bishop Joyce was subjected to a test of char- 
acter by his election to the Episcopacy which has 
seriously affected more than one man. The in- 
vestment of a man with as absolute power as our 
polity clothes the bishops with is a strain upon 
humility. Many a man has grown arbitrary and 
self-sufficient by the exercise of such authority, and 
by having to hear chiefly adulation and flattery — 
or at least praise. But with Bishop Joyce's elec- 
tion to the Episcopacy there came, if anytliing, 
added humility and patience. We have seen him 
wading through the work of annual Conferences 
with a kindness and a patience, under trying cir- 



Isaac Wilson Joyce as We Knew Him. 259 



cumstances, that were amazing. In one of our larg- 
est Conferences he was a guest in our home. Night 
after nighty twelve and even one o'clock would 
find him still up, going into the many cases re- 
quiring adjustment, with minutest care. And the 
patience with committees, ministerial and lay, in a 
peculiarly difficult Conference session, involving an 
extraordinary number of changes, was a growing 
wonder to those who knew it. And the secret of it 
all was his absolute devotion to Jesus Christ. In 
it he showed himself a great soul, with that great- 
ness described by J. G. Holland: 

"To honor God, to benefit mankind, 
To serve with lofty gifts the lowly needs 
Of the poor race for which the God-man died, 
And do it all for love — 0 1 this is great 



CHAPTER XX. 



Estimates by Church Leaders. 

WE give the following characterizations 
of Bishop Joyce and his work by leaders 
of the Church, who were long associated 
with him, selecting a few out of very many. The 
first — that of Bishop McCabe — will read almost 
like a prophecy. The sustained co-incidences of 
their lives were further added to in the manner of 
their death. Bishop McCabe, also, being stricken 
with apoplexy, lingering for a time amid the 
prayers and tears of a host, like Bishop Joyce, 
and then passing away: 

BY BISHOP m'cABE. 

"Bishop Joyce was born on the same day of 
the month and the same year that I was born, and 
in the same State — namely, the 11th day of Oc- 
tober, 1836. When I heard that he was stricken 
down, the first words that came to my mind were 
these : come next.' I trust I shall be as ready as 
he was, for when they bore him from the platform, 
he said: 'If this is God^s way, His will be done.' 
It is so blessed to so live that sudden death is 
sudden glory, and the summons to arise and depart 

260 



Estimates hy Church Leaders. 261 



is not a painful surprise to us, but a joyous call 
to a higher and more glorious career. I believe 
him to have been a good man, a true man, a winner 
of souls, and a man of great evangelistic power." 

BY BISHOP MERRILL. 

"His work as a bishop proved the fitness of 
his election. He entered upon it courageously and 
prosecuted it with the zeal of a man of God, ad- 
justing himself to the practical phases of his ofBce 
without abating in the least the ardor of his soul 
in the spiritual lines of his ministry. The work 
of revival was still his favorite work. He had 
revivals in his Conferences, and often sent his 
preachers home from Conference sessions aflame 
with zeal for conversions. His influence for good 
in keeping the spirit of evangelism awake in the 
ministry and in the Church can not be adequately 
estimated. After all, there is no better repute for 
a Methodist bishop than to be known through the 
Churches as a revival bishop. This distinction be- 
longed to Bishop Joyce while living, and will crown 
and glorify his memory through ages to come. 

"Bishop Joyce was a much-loved man by the 
ministers of the Church, but not more by any class 
than by his colleagues. On his election he came 
into the fullest confidence of the bishops, and al- 
ways commanded their esteem and love. He was 
chosen by them to preside over the Epworth 
League, and thus to do much towards shaping the 
religious life of the young people, and thereby to 
aff^ect and give tone to the spirituality of the 
whole Church. He was sent abroad by them to the 
most important foreign missions of the Church, 



262 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



and intrusted with the most important and delicate 
affairs of administration, where world-wide inter- 
ests depended on the wisdom and fidelity of his 
work. No disappointment ever came because of 
any responsibility put upon him. The results of 
his labors abroad elicited the admiration and grati- 
tude of those who sent him and enhanced the esteem 
in which he was held by the whole Church. Not 
even a summary of his work in his wide field is 
possible. Gloriously did he come to the consum- 
mation. In the strength of his manhood, in the 
zenith of a career marked with triumphs, with fac- 
ulties alert and with powers aglow with fervor, 
he met the summons and bowed submissively to the 
order which closed his activities while the star of 
hope for greater victories still gleamed brightly 
in the heaven of his love.'' 

BY BISHOP FOSS. 

"The characteristic of Bishop Joyce which im- 
pressed me most was his sustained and unquench- 
able evangelistic enthusiasm. Most soul-winners at 
times grow weary; but he came nearer than any 
other man I have ever known to being an exhaust- 
less magazine of evangelistic dynamite. The sight 
of a crowded congregation at a Conference or 
camp-meeting would always set him on fire; and 
to all eternity thousands will bless God for his per- 
sistent, overwhelming appeals on such occasions for 
the immediate surrender of the sinful soul to the 
present Savior. Even through an interpreter such 
appeals from his lips were often 'the power of God 
unto salvation.' 

"The Board of Bishops will long remember 



Estimates hy Church Leaders. 263 



liis report to them of his work in Japan and China, 
and especially his evangelistic successes there. At 
the close of the report he gave his colleagues a 
word of exhortation on the wisdom of ending the 
sermon with an earnest appeal to sinners to 'rise 
for prayers,' or in some other way openly commit 
themselves at once to God; and, with streaming 
eyes and quivering lips, he cried out, 'Brethren, let 
us give the Holy Ghost a chance !' '' 

BY BISHOP GOODSELL. 

"My heart is heavy because of the death of 
Bishop Joyce. Elected by the same General Con- 
ference our friendship began with the day of our 
election when we prayed together for grace for 
our work. For seventeen yea.rs his acquaintance 
has been both inspiring and delightful to me. He 
was a holy man, pure in speech and right in con- 
duct. His conscience was rightly tutored, and took 
cognizance of all his powers. There was no part 
of him which was not under control. Naturally 
quick-tempered, he could be silent under provo- 
cation when few could resist a strong sentence. He 
under-rated the grace in him when he told me 
that he was silent when tried because if he began 
to speak it set him on fire, or, as he put it, with 
a twinkle in his eye, 'It stirred up the Irish in 
him.' In all these seventeen years of intim_acy I 
recall nothing unworthy in him of the Christian 
gentleman and bishop. He differed without anger, 
debated without heat, and estimated without depre- 
ciation or the slightest sign of jealous}^ or envy. 
He praised warmly, and was cold and critical only 
to himself. 



264 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



"While abroad he observed carefully, and al- 
ways came home with an accurate knowledge of 
the work. The evangelizing power of the man 
was so steady that, whether he preached in English 
or through an interpreter, men were won to Christ, 
I believe, in every Conference he held. He said 
more than once with a holy joy to which he had 
a right: 'My dear colleagues, you all are more 
gifted in many ways than I. But God gives me 
something, too: He gives me access to souls. In 
every Conference some are converted.' 

"If any have heard him preach their verdict 
must be that, always clear and strong in matter, 
his hortatory summing-up and closing were often 
truly awful in their power. I know of no one 
who equaled him among us in exhortation and in 
the immediate results of exhortation. In the 
Bishops' Conferences he was an infrequent speaker, 
but always commanded attention by the clearness, 
precision, compactness, timeliness, and brevity of 
his contributions to our debates. 

"He was a very brave man, not only in meeting 
physical peril, but in administration. He did not 
let wrong things stay because it was easy, nor 
wrong men remain in power for fear of raising 
enemies. He would be the last to claim freedom 
from mistakes. He told me he felt he had made 
some in Eastern administration ; but no one doubted 
that these were due to imperfect knowledge of 
Eastern conditions, and not to self-will. 

"We have seen for a quadrennium that he was 
failing. There was a slower and heavier step. 
He sometimes complained that his feet were sore 
under his weight, which was moderate. Sometimes 



Estimates hy Church Leaders, 



265 



to intimates he would say: 'The General Confer- 
ence will make an end of old man Joyce next time.' 
But the end-making was something to smile over. 
He often told m^e that he prayed to know when he 
was old and not to resent the judgments of others 
as to this. I could have wished he had spared him- 
self in labor a little after passing sixty-five. But 
to the end he worked on as if he was forty-five. 

"And his ending was like him: a ride until 
midnight Saturday night, broken sleep, a sermon 
attempted, a moment's hesitancy and confusion, a 
struggle to finish his sermon, then acquiescence in 
the sudden finishing of his work, and then increas- 
ing paralysis, weakness, and at last death. We 
may know where he is. The only place to which 
so good a man can go is to the home of God." 

BY BISHOP MAI.I.ALIEU. 

"A more conscientious and painstaking and 
faithful administrator of all afi^airs committed to 
his charge I have never known. He was brotherly, 
sympathetic, and helpful in all cases. He was ab- 
solutely sound in the faith and in all respects loyal 
to Methodism. If ever a man was wholly and irre- 
vocably consecrated to God, he was the one. 

"He had that supreme quality of the highest 
type of genius, the will and capacity for unremit- 
ting hard work. He was a great broadminded 
man. There was not the slightest suspicion of 
smallness or meanness in his nature. Rank, wealth, 
power, could not daunt him or turn him from the 
path of duty. At the same time the humblest and 
poorest were dear to him, and he was glad to share 



266 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



with them and stand by them in every hour of 
affliction, suffering, or need. Race, color, lan- 
guage, were nothing to him, for he recognized the 
Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of all men. 
He was sincere to the last degree; there was not 
the most distant suspicion of sham and pretense 
in his nature. He had a lofty scorn of all cheap 
tricks and subterfuges, and despised all hypocrisy ; 
he wore his heart upon his sleeve. He was modest 
and sensitive to an unusual degree. He never put 
on airs, never assumed dignity, never shut himself 
off from the commonest of the common people. 
Still he had very clear-cut convictions of right and 
wrong, of the true and false, and so without noise 
or disagreeable self-assertion he did not hesitate 
to disclose his convictions and stand by them. He 
was especially noted for his steadfastness in his 
friendships. It was his nature to be loving, fra- 
ternal, affectionate, and steadfast. His friends 
could depend upon him. He was found loyal, true, 
and genuine. At the same time he was not obliv- 
ious of others who were not bound to him by special 
relations of intimate friendship. It may be af- 
firmed, with unhesitating emphasis, that he was 
an ardent lover of humanity. In the scope of his 
prayers and sympathies and services, he counted 
himself the servant of all." 

BY BISHOP FOWLER. 

"He studied faithfully the work committed to 
him. He was excessively industrious. He worked 
as one who feels that the night is coming, when 
no man can work. He rejoiced in a high state 



Estimates hy Church Leaders. 



267 



of grace, and walked in the light of God's favor, 
and preached the gospel in Spirit and with power. 
He was a good administrator and a marked popu- 
lar preacher with great hortatory powers. He was 
thoughtful and modest, but definite and decided 
in his opinions in the Board, and we always knew 
where to find him. He was brotherly, affectionate, 
and companionable. The force of his intellect and 
the forces of his character will long be remembered 
by us." 

BY BISHOP THOBURN. 

'^1 esteem it a privilege to be permitted to 
record my appreciation of our beloved Bishop 
Joyce. I had known him for twenty-five years. 
From the first I found him to be a true man, 
measuring up to the New Testament standard of 
a spiritually-minded disciple. His conversation, 
his preaching, his prayers, and in short his whole 
life, was that of a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ. 
Our Church can ill afford to spare a man of his 
type, but he had almost finished his threescore 
years and ten, and by faithful and abundant labors 
had earned the sweet rest into which he has en- 
tered. His brief visit to India some years ago was 
a source of blessing to many, and will never be 
forgotten." 

BY BISHOP HAMILTON. 

"There are few men who wear out, and when 
one man does the world will know it; he is the 
only man who has finished his work. Death then 
is only the signal of work done. Methodism has 



268 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



always made honorable mention of Vorn-out 
preachers.' 

"Bishop Joyce was literally worn out; he may 
not have known the remaining measure of his 
strength. But it has been evident to his friends, 
for many months, that the wheel might be broken 
at the cistern at any moment. Like the tourist car 
away on a journey, and where there was no law 
against speed, he has broken down in the middle 
of the road. From the first there has been little 
hope of repair. And now, the end having come, 
nothing in life more becomes him than his death. 

"It is not difficult to discern the nature of his 
work, the amount of it no summarj/^ will tell. He 
was an old-time Methodist preacher put forward 
fifty years into our time. He had only one busi- 
ness, and that he has so certainly dispatched, that 
it ^is business well done.' From his call to preach 
to the very last words spoken by him in the pulpit 
of the camp at Red Rock, he has had but a single 
aim. He came to call sinners to repentance, and 
they have heard his call to the ends of the earth. 

"In every sermon there was splendid appeal. 
His fervor imparted itself magnetically to the 
multitudes who heard him, and his work always 
went on with spirit. Beginning never so moder- 
ately, when he heard the sound of a going in the 
tops of the mulberry -trees, then he would bestir 
himself. His enthusiasm had Hhe genius of sin- 
cerity,' and the people were profoundly moved. I 
met an intelligent and distinguished lawyer, who 
was not a Methodist, in North Dakota several years 
ago, that said to me, ^I have heard many of the 
great preachers of this country, but I have never 



Estimates hy Church Leaders. 269 



heard a man who has given me such an impression 
of my personal responsibiUty and duty as your 
Bishop Joyce/ and added, 'He knows what he is 
talking about/ 

"He was able, out of the pulpit, on the street 
and in the homes of the people, to influence persons 
religiously as few men can do. It was his pre- 
eminence in this regard which elevated him to the 
episcopacy. He was a great pastor. I was a 
guest in Albany, New York, two or three years 
ago, in the home of a wealthy family, not Meth- 
odists, where I invited the Bishop to dine with me. 
Never have I seen a man so ingratiate himself, and 
without any apparent intention, in the hearts of 
the four or five children and their father and 
mother as he did in the two hours we were to- 
gether. 

"It was his aff*able, entertaining, and inspiring 
manner which enabled him to induce individuals 
and congregations to give money so cheerfully to 
any and every good cause whenever and wherever 
he asked for it. His success in raising twenty 
thousand dollars at the session of the California 
Conference for the University of the Pacific will 
not be forgotten. 

"There was a tenderness in his sympathies 
which made him a man of sorrows and acquainted 
with grief. He gave away more than he had, 
and was compelled to ask and receive that he might 
continue to give. A volume could be written in 
giving some account of his generous impulses in 
the homes of the poor and the bereaved. 

"He was never troubled with unbelief, but dis- 
belief annoyed him. The heroism of his intellect 



270 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



was in his faith; his ^faith was the soul of reHgion 
and worked his body.' He believed the root of all 
heresy to be ^the effort of men to earn, rather than 
to receive their salvation;' this he knew to be un- 
scripturalj and he could vote against it as easily 
as against any other kind of sin. 

"In the delicate and difficult duties of his office, 
his forceful purpose sometimes awakened differ- 
ences which were very pronounced. But in doing 
what seemed best for him to do, he was so sure 
of his own motives it was easier for him to advance 
than retreat. He was vigorous in his administra- 
tion, but when not unceremoniously opposed was 
as conciliatory as the Christian woman. 

"The end of preaching with Bishop Joyce was 
to save men, and he made it a vocation. If he had 
any art it was in the exercise of the skill with which 
he could gain men, and even against their wills. 
He rejoiced more over the one sinner that had 
been saved, than the ninety and nine sermons which 
went astray, as he believed, because he had seen 
no fruit of them. Preaching without praying to 
him, therefore, was a bow without a cord. It had 
no place or use for an arrow. 

"We shall miss him wherever we meet the 
wings of the morning for he went everywhere 
preaching, but nowhere more than in calling sin- 
ners to repentance." 

BY BISHOP VINCENT. 

"Bishop Joyce was an intensely earnest man. 
God was not a theory nor a dream to him, but the 
one great Reality of the universe. And a living, 
loving, abiding, inspiring Reality, in whose con- 



Estimates by Church Leaders, 



2T1 



stant presence he lived. God was in every breath 
he drew, and his ofBcial Hfe was full of faith. He 
believed. He knew. He rested. He rejoiced. He 
lived out his faith." 

BY BISHOP OI.DHAM. 

"He has always been to me an inspiring per- 
sonality. And his word was always with power. 
His was the supreme cut of the Gospel preacher. 
There was always enough of the intellectual to 
engage and interest the mind, while there was 
markedly present the urgent warmth, the compell- 
ing energy of the prophet who takes you by storm 
in the name of the Lord his God from whom he 
brings his message. He taught China how to look 
for immediate conversions. He mightily helped 
South America. He was a flaming torch up and 
down the North American continent." 

BY DR. HOMER EATON. 

"Bishop Joyce was an ideal man and bishop. 
He accomplished a great work for Christ and 
His kingdom on the earth, and has now gone to 
his heavenly coronation." 

BY DR. JAMES M. BUCKLEY. 
(In an editorial in The Christian Advocate,) 

"As a bishop Dr. Joyce was dignified in the 
chair, and, except when overwhelmed with appli- 
cations or wearied with extraordinary travel and 
work, was affable and approachable in private in- 
terviews with the ministry ajid laity of the Church. 
With the people he was very popular as a preacher, 
and on some ocasions rose to a height which might 



272 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



satisfy the reasonable ambition of any one. Some- 
times this occurred under the most unfavorable cir- 
cumstances. . . . He belongs to the class of bish- 
ops with George, Roberts, Peck, Waugh, and Levi 
Scott. Not that these resemble each other in many 
particulars, nor that he resembled them in many 
respects, yet there is one broad resemblance, the 
evangelical trait, the hortative preaching, the 
heartfelt spirit and manner. The sum of his 
career abundantly justifies his selection. He passes 
out of our sight with a spotless reputation and 
with many great and good achievements to liis 
credit.'^ 

BY DR. CHARLES PARKHURST. 
(Editorial in Zion^s Herald.) 

"He was wonderfully well balanced — kind with- 
out being weak, deeply devout and zealously ac- 
tive, yet with no touch of cant or fanaticism, 
fervent yet prudent, a friend to all, but no flat- 
terer, every way sensible and efficient. 

"Undoubtedly he worked too hard. He could 
not seem to help it, such was his ardent nature. 
How greatly he will be missed! Genial, beautiful, 
reliable, he wore his honors and his dignities 
meekly. He could be implicitly trusted. He never 
uttered an unkind word. His elevation honored 
the pastorate, and showed that the Church, some- 
times at least, puts a proper estimate upon those 
who go about doing good. As he said of Bishop 
Wiley, so we can say of him: 

" 'He left but little earthly property for his 
family; but he left them the legacy of a pure 
character, a good name, an exalted purpose, and 



Estimates hy Church Leaders, 



273 



a useful life. His memory will live in the hearts 
of thousands of the Lord's poor, who loved him 
because they knew he loved them for Christ's sake. 
He was a true friend. He was never in haste to 
believe evil of others ; he chose to live in an atmos- 
phere of charity toward all men. He never allowed 
himself to cherish malice or ill-will toward any.' 

"His death-room, we learn, was a veritable 
ante-chamber of heaven. He rested in perfect 
peace, with uttermost confidence in his Redeemer, 
and broke forth repeatedly, so far as physical 
powers permitted, in exclamations of great joy. 
It was as might have been expected, from such 
a life. Few men in the Church have been more 
beloved, few will be more lamented." 

BY DR. JAMES H. POTTS. 
(Editorial in Michigan Christian Advocate,) 

"The salvation of souls was the burden of his 
heart, no matter what else the particular respon- 
sibility he had in hand. Bishop Foss testifies that 
Joyce ^came nearer than any other man he ever 
knew to being an exhaustless magazine of evan- 
gelical dynamite.' Bishop Moore declares that 
^experimental religion and a passion for souls domi- 
nated his pulpit efforts.' Evangelist Dunham re- 
calls the fact that it was Bishop Joyce who inaug- 
urated Pentecostal services at the Annual Confer- 
ence session. ^The thought of a bishop and two 
or three hundred Methodist preachers convening 
for a week together in a community, attending to 
business, properly so, yet not one soul brought to 
a decision for God, and that session leaving no hal- 
18 



274 Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



lowed re^dval memory behind it; then the young 
men having no lesson in soul-winning, was a 
thought so painful to him, that at the outset of 
his service as a bishop he determined to make every 
session a revival.' And this determination he ac- 
complished. 

"The secret of this evangelistic spirit in Bishop 
Joyce may be found in the religious character and 
consecration of the man himself. Bishop Malla- 
lieu pays him this remarkable tribute, that 'if ever 
a man was wholly and irrevocably consecrated to 
God, he was the one.' It seems to us that Chris- 
tian eulogy can not get beyond that. But Bishop 
Warren confirms the estimate by saying that Joyce 
lived Christianit}'-, and ^preached an immediate sal- 
vation from all sin to a heathen congregation that 
had never heard of Christ with the same unction 
and expectation of results by the present power 
of the Holy Ghost as he preached the same gospel 
to one nurtured in Christian beliefs from infancy.' 

"This rich experience kept him in touch with 
the Author of all life, and it was ever an expec- 
tation with him that the God on whom he relied 
would demonstrate His presence and power to 
save just as really and effectively as if He were 
a person present in form and parts, to be seen 
and touched like human beings. He thought of 
God as ever at his right hand, round about him, 
in him, and working through him. As Bishop 
Hamilton says : ^He saw the supernatural in every- 
thing, and could have little patience with the 
preachers and teachers who were boisterously bent 
on trying always to displace the supernatural to 
find place for the natural. The story of his un- 



Estimates hy Church Leaders. 275 



selfishness is the best that is ever told. He was 
absolutely self -forgetful in the presence of crying 
need. His generosity was an embarrassment to 
most of his associates whenever there was a call 
for help.' 

"How impressive and beautiful such a char- 
acter! Pure, trustful, benignant, serious, earnest, 
insistent on present blessing, with God always be- 
fore him, flinging his whole life force into labor 
for souls, coming to his death-stroke in a camp- 
meeting sermon, testifying with his latest breath, 
'I have preached the gospel in every land, and 
everywhere it has met the needs of men,' and then 
yielding up his great spirit in this strain of sweet 
submission, 'If this is God's time and God's way, 
His will be done !' 

" Well done, good and faithful servant !' It 
is cheering that thy life was lived in our day, that 
we saw thee and knew thee, and that the same 
inspirations and influences which impelled thee to 
thy life-tasks are yet present with us, and may 
nerve us for like endeavor if we will but yield to 
them!" 

BY DR. DAVID D. THOMPSON. 

(Editorial in NortJiwestern Christian Advocate.') 

"For seventeen years Bishop Joyce went in 
and out before the Churches, bearing this high 
office, doing episcopal work, never flinching, never 
complaining, accounting no labor too taxing, no 
burden too heavy, and no sacrifice too great, so 
he might serve the cause of God and win souls. 
With him the minister was not lost in the bishop. 
He carried into his wider field all the zeal and 
evangelistic fervor that gave him success in the 



276 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



pastorate. He had conversions in his Conferences. 
While not lacking in executive ability, but indeed 
measuring up to a high standard, he bore the 
honored distinction of being known everywhere as 
the "^revival bishop.' On this account his coming 
to the Conferences was anticipated with delight, 
the preachers expecting a spiritual uplift and fresh 
inspiration from his presence and counsels. 

"This marvelous power accompanied him wher- 
ever he went. Whether in Japan or China or 
India or in South America, revivals attended his 
ministry, and conversions took place, even when his 
preaching was through an interpreter. A great 
tide of spiritual quickening followed him all over 
the Celestial Empire during his episcopal visit to 
China, and the Church in that far-away quarter 
of the globe has felt the impulse of his visit ever 
since. 

"He could well say, as he is reported to have 
said with thickening voice, as cerebral hemor- 
rhage arrested the flow of his speech, have 
preached this gospel in almost every land, and 
always with the same effect.' His preaching was 
with power and the demonstration of the Holy 
Spirit. 

"While his episcopal career was noted for the 
revival power that attended him, there was no re- 
spect in which his work was not a success. He 
looked after the practical interests of the Church 
with the eye of an expert. In cabinet work he was 
wise, patient, and painstaking. In the Conference 
chair he presided with ease and dignity. His mind 
was alert to discover men who had in them the 
elements of success, and to give them a chance. 



Estimates by Church Leaders. 277 



Those who brought things to pass commanded his 
respect. 

"As an administrator he was conscientious to 
a degree frequently causing him the acutest per- 
sonal pain. Sharp difference sometimes created 
troublesome problems, but faithfully he strove to 
do the utmost and exact right with every brother 
whose interests were in his hands, and at the same 
time faithfully conserve the effectiveness and effi- 
ciency of the great Church at large. Again and 
again, when importuned for something he could 
not give, he has spent hours when he ought to 
have been asleep in sad and painful sympathies 
over conditions he was powerless to change. His 
heart was as tender as that of a woman, and every 
preacher's woes were made his own woes. Those 
who did not know him well sometimes mistook this 
high devotion to duty for willfulness. None ever 
more gladly welcomed all the possible light and in- 
formation on any subject, or more devoutly sought 
to reach the exact fact and truth. 

"As a pulpit orator he will hold high rank. 
He was a mighty preacher, and was in special de- 
mand for camp-meetings and other occasions which 
brought together great crowds. He had rare 
power in moving large audiences. He was presi- 
dent of the Epworth League from 1900 to 1904, 
and was beloved by thousands of the young people 
of the Church, to whom he was a spiritual father 
and inspirer to a more consecrated life. 

"The sweetness of his spirit and the beauty 
and spotlessness of his personal character were, 
after all, his superlative charm, and the final and 
decisive element in his greatness.'' 



278 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



BY DU. CliAUDIUS B. SPENCER. 
(Editorial in Central Christian Advocate.) 

"As a bishop it can be said that he gave him- 
self to his work without even reasonable reserva- 
tion. Big in frame, having a constitution of 
woven steel, he literally threw himself into the 
arena — on the altar — everywhere. He preached, 
lectured, dedicated churches, often paying his ex- 
penses, and often, if not always, without compen- 
sation. He visited ninety-two places in the North- 
west where no other bishop had ever been. 
And wherever he went men kindled their smol- 
dering lamps at his torch. In fact, without a 
word or a hint disparaging to any one else, it 
was given to Bishop Joyce to be an evangelist. 
He was an evangelist before he was elected bishop. 
His heart was no less swept by the passion for 
souls after the episcopal staff was put in ]iis hand, 
than it was when he was a country shepherd of the 
flock of Christ. Amen. There are diversities of 
gifts. Nor can the eye say of the hand, 'I have 
no need of thee.' But : may God grant — may God 
grant, I say, that never may there fail from our 
episcopal college one who will stand pre-eminently 
forth as an evangelist. There are such in that 
body now. May their enthusiasm never be cooled 
©fF by the proprieties of what is, after all, but an 
office — exalted office though it be! . . . 

"The wanderer has found the path home. May 
the path he blazed, in any, in every clime, be trod 
like gloriously, as by sons of God. Adieu — for a 
little time. Then? To take the path again, to- 
gether, on, on, still on, where Jesus still leads 
the way." 



Estimates hy Church Leaders, 



279 



BY DR. R. J. COOKE, BOOK EDITOR OF THE METH- 
ODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

Dear Doctor Sheridan, — I wish it were pos- 
sible for me to reply in a fitting manner to your 
kind request for my estimate of Bishop Joyce, 
but how can cold words adequately express the 
tender est emotions of the heart which start at the 
thought of those we love? How can calm and 
passionless judgment sanely estimate qualities and 
powers when the soul of us is up in revolt against 
all critical analysis which would mar the faces of 
loved ones gone, or blur the memory of their sweet 
companionship .f^ Wordsworth has something to 
say of 

One that would peep and botanize 
Upon his mother's grave/^ 

and doubtless there are those who are so far gone 
in atrophy of feeling, like Darwin who lost his 
ear for music, that they are no longer able to 
respond to sentiments beautiful and tender, but 
imagine in the silly pride and hardness of their 
hearts that stoical indifference to misfortune is 
better evidence of a cultured mind than outward 
expressions of bitter grief or of glorious appre- 
ciation. To such people the very music of heaven 
would all be one with the raucous voices which 
Dante heard in Malaboge. If then my estimate 
of my departed friend should become a eulogy 
rather than a critical appraisal of his gifts, it is 
because I can not forget the love wherewith he 
loved me, and for that reason I feel incompetent 
for the task you have assigned me. 



280 



Life of Isaac Wilson Joyce. 



I may be permitted to say, however, that with 
Bishop Joyce I was for many years most intimate. 
I knew him thoroughly ; knew him in all his moods, 
and seasons; in his public life and private life, 
knew his judgments of men and affairs, and this 
I have to say, that in my estimation, a better, 
nobler hearted man, a man whose whole inner life 
was tuned to the sweetest music of the noblest 
living, never lived and moved among us, laboring 
night and day for the advancement of the king- 
dom of God. He loved God deeply and all things 
which make for righteousness. He loved the 
brethren, and his was a heart that ever yearned 
for human friendship. His character was a fine 
combination of strength and beauty. In his 
preaching he struggled intensely to make God real 
to those who heard ; to make Christ and salvation 
and heaven real to all who cared. How his soul, 
at times, would pour itself out in torrents of fire 
and pathos and love, when the Holy Spirit brood- 
ing over a congregation, the whole body of be- 
lievers responded to his magnetic eloquence! But 
I have heard him in prayer in a humble cabin on 
the lonely mountain side when he was just as fer- 
vent as when before the vast multitude at a camp- 
meeting. He was an heroic soul. Many are the 
instances I could relate of his courage and of his 
patience, of his Christly self-restraint, but I am 
writing you a letter and not a book. He was self- 
sacrificing. The bishops who have lived and la- 
bored among us in the Southern Conferences have 
all been generous in expenditure of self. When 
Bishop Joyce first came to Chattanooga he and 
Mrs. Joyce immediately entered heart and soul into 



Estimates hy Church Leaders. 281 



the incessant toil of those who were building for 
the splendid results which are seen to-day in beau- 
tiful East Tennessee. After eight years' residence 
in the South, Bishop Joyce left for other fields 
with nothing but his insurance. Nothing.^ He 
carried with him the undying love of a noble 
people ! 

Among the many important duties of a bishop 
in the Methodist Church the most important is to 
put the right man in the right place. So, as a 
bishop presiding in the Conferences, Bishop Joyce 
was ever considerate of two things: the preacher 
and the Church. He would not sacrifice a preacher 
if he could help it; he certainly would not ruin 
a Church. That he was always wise, and never 
made mistakes, he himself would not admit; that 
he was ever willfully autocratic against all light 
and leading would be — an exaggeration. He could 
be firm, as Tennyson makes Cardinal Pole say, I 
have seen a pine in Italy which flung its shadow 
athwart a cataract, the cataract shook the shadow, 
firm stood the pine; but his heart was as tender as 
woman's love, and to the Methodist preacher he 
was kindness incarnate. 

Such was Bishop Joyce as I knew him. And 
here I must close, for I must stop somewhere. In 
one final word, this dear man of God stood before 
us the living picture of Goldsmith's village pastor, 

*^And as a bird each fond endearment tries 
To tempt its new fledged offspring to the skies, 
He tried each art, reproved each dull delay, 
Allured to brighter worlds and led the way." 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: May 2006 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724) 779-2111 



